Dir: James Watkins
Starring: Daniel
Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Sophie Stuckey
Susan Hill’s
famous ghost story gets another adaptation, this time on the big screen
courtesy of classic horror production company Hammer.
Arthur
Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is a young lawyer whose wife died in child birth. A
few years later he is still struggling with the loss. His work has been
suffering and his boss gives him a last chance. He sends him to a mansion to sort
out the papers of a deceased woman in a small village. However, Arthur starts
seeing figures around the supposedly deserted mansion.
The
classic ghost story is a genre which is rarely seen nowadays in horror, a genre
which has become overcrowded by torture horror, pointless remakes and found
footage movies, so it is a nice relief to for such a film to be out as such a
high profile release.
The Woman in Black is quite an old and
well known story so some of it does feel familiar. The outsider city man coming
to a small village, the villagers being against him and trying to make him
leave, people hiding secrets and bad things happening to children are all clichés
which we’ve seen many times before but the familiarity doesn’t drag the film
down. It manages to create a fairly creepy atmosphere; the scenes of Arthur
Kipps alone at the house are particularly tense. However, it spoils the
atmosphere by going for the loud noise jump scares so often favoured in modern
horror films. The scares mostly come from glimpses of things in the background
or behind Arthur, be they a moving figure or ever just a face, and these would
work well to build up an almost unbearable atmosphere if they were backed with
sparse soundtrack but the film spoils it slightly by going for the shock. This
may cause an instant reaction from the audience but it dispels some of the
tension that’s been built up. The effective horror films are the ones that
leave you with an ominous feeling once you’ve left the cinema, they leave you
fidgety and on edge, not the ones that you look back on and say it made you
jump. A pigeon can make you jump but they don’t leave you scared.
Another
problem with the film is the casting of Daniel Radcliffe. His acting is perfectly
good but he never seems old enough for the role. You never really believe that
he is a widowed father; he seems more like the young child’s older brother. This
doesn’t become a problem when we are left with Radcliffe in the mansion but it
will be a nagging thought left in your head.
The
film realises its setting effectively and all the actors play their roles well.
The build up of tension in the mansion at night is genuinely effective and the
scares can make you jump, you just wish there was more to the horror.
A good
attempt at a classic ghost story which unfortunately still relies too much on
loud noises and jump shocks. It is often creepy but rarely truly scary. It ends
up as an entertaining watch but pretty forgettable. More atmosphere and less
jumps for the next ghost story please.
3 out of 5 Buttons
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