I'll be honest, I really don't understand the people who liked the first movie and hate this one for being just like the first movie.
The only noticeable difference between both of them is that, in the first movie, there was a sense of isolation because of one person in the house, over a bunch of children and their two teachers.
The awful jump "scares" are still here and the non-scary character of "Woman in Black (WiB)" returns. In-fact, they repeat the same mistakes from the first movie and try to explain way too much and show too much of the WiB character. Keeping WiB's character in shadows and not showing her terrible CGI/makeup caked face would've provided more terror than using her face for jump "scare" here and there.
My complaint with both movies is the same. Despite having good acting (both of them) and good atmosphere, they fail to create proper horror the moment WiB shows up and her shtick of moving items and opening/closing doors begins all over again. They NEED to keep her in the dark and only show her dress, which some scenes actually DO.
Unlike the first movie (6/10), I am giving this one 5/10 despite enjoying the acting of the lead actress and even the children, more than the last one (Radcliffe, nope.. did not like him much in that movie). One point taken off for shooting some key scenes in horrible lighting. The scenes in cellar are the ones I am talking about. The characters keep looking at items for so long and all you're doing is trying to squint and make out what in the hell they are actually looking at. All cellar scenes are intentionally shot under one candle-light or a lamp, and it's a bad idea.
In one of the horror scenes with all characters in cellar, they keep trying to light a candle but WiB keeps blowing it out (or wind being passed by her?). But then, when the scene ends, the male character turns on his flashlight. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? He didn't turn on the flashlight when everyone was scared of darkness but did it instantly at the end? Really? They didn't think people would question that? He didn't even try to turn on the flashlight before, AT ALL.
That said, this movie is NOT bad. It just does what the first one did. Ignore the people giving it 1/10 and whining about it being worse than the first one. They obviously had a hard-on for Radcliffe and gave that movie flying colors, despite him being average in that movie and rest of the movie being same as this one. Read the reviews of the first movie, many are first time horror viewers who are praising Radcliffe and obviously saw the horror movie cause they were Harry Potter fans. They then saw this movie thinking there would be some connection to Radcliffe but since he isn't here, they ended up focusing on the movie's flaws which were present in the first movie.
While we're at it, REALLY? Are you seriously setting up the ending for another sequel? We all know that they want to milk the WiB cow till they won't make any profit from her at all. Both movies had $15 million budget and first one made them $125 million while this one made them about $49 million dollars. This is a nice profit even if the movie is just average. The third movie will make them even less profit it seems.
Maybe end the movie as a trilogy then, cause we know they're gonna make a sequel. Just let it be the last one.
