Haunted house of Hammer

THE WOMAN IN BLACK - film review. Stolidly and unflinchingly traditional, The Woman in Black does little to move the horror genre forward, but is still an entertaining film of its type.
Eschewing the high-octane thrills so popular among his contemporaries, director James Watkins draws upon the conventions of the Hammer Horror studio to create a film that is inevitably melodramatic, but undeniably spooky.
Daniel Radcliffe, in his first major role since the finale of the Harry Potter franchise, stars as Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer dispatched to a rural village following the death of a wealthy client.
Arriving in the village of Crythin Gifford, Arthur discovers (in keeping with low-budget horrors from Nosferatu to The Wicker Man) that the locals are sinister and unhelpful. As Kipps investigates the client’s house, and the family who once dwelt there, he uncovers a disturbing history of betrayal and revenge.
The Woman in Black cannot, therefore, be described as an especially original piece, but it nevertheless manages to deliver a few well-crafted scares. The Victorian-period mansion house is a marvellous piece of production design, looking like a chaotic jumble-sale of pathetic relics from a bygone era, whilst the suitably unnerving soundtrack elicited more than a few gasps from the audience at my screening.
As far as Daniel Radcliffe’s performance is concerned, the adjective that most immediately springs to mind is ‘competent’. Although he manages to take a convincing step away from his Potter persona, and is a reasonably likeable central character, Radcliffe fails to make a much greater impression. This failure is not entirely his fault (confined within James Watkins’ cinematic ghost-train he has little more to do than ‘react’), but it is something of a disappointment nonetheless. If nothing else, I felt that Radcliffe had been cast in a role that was somewhat too old for him; his character is meant to have fathered a four-year-old son, and regardless of his actual age, Radcliffe’s schoolboy looks rather counted against him.
Nonetheless, The Woman in Black is a fun ‘haunted house’ movie of a very familiar type, and should provide 90 minutes entertainment to Hammer Horror and Potter fans alike. Although slightly rickety in terms of cast performances, and unwaveringly unoriginal in terms of plot, The Woman in Black was an entertaining afternoon’s viewing, and is well worth a look.
The Woman in Black (12a) Rating: ***