The Woman in Black

Rating: ***1/2

I get the feeling that Daniel Radcliffe’s first conversation with his agent after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 wrapped went something like this:

RADCLIFFE: So I need a new part: no blockbusters, no boy and especially no wizards. What have you got?

AGENT: Well, there’s this one thing here that’s a ghost story…

RADCLIFFE: Meh.

AGENT: It’s a period piece too! It takes place at the turn of the 20^th century…

RADCLIFFE: Hm… Yeah…

AGENT: You would play a lawyer with a young son and who’s a widower.

RADCLIFFE: Wow! Can he also be emotionally disturbed?

AGENT: He can!

RADCLIFFE: Sold.

Indeed, the first time we see Radcliffe’s Arthur Kippy on screen he’s quite the mess. Losing his young wife in child-birth, he’s now left with a four-year-old son, and one last chance to prove himself before he’s fired for trauma-related gold-bricking at his law firm. He’s dispatched to a quiet sea-side village to over see the legal paperwork of an isolated estate there, and Arthur, determined not to let himself down or his boy, is going to make the best of a bad situation.

Naturally, the bad situation tends to be worse, and in the sad, unfortunate era before Google and iPhones, Arthur comes into town not knowing that there’s a curse on the very house he’s trying to put into escrow. This curse involves the spirit of a deranged woman who kills the children of the town’s people whenever she’s seen when the living are in view of the estate. The town’s people, scared beyond the capacity for rational thought, don’t tell Arthur why he has to leave, they just make it clear that he should. The kindly Mr. Daly (Ciarán Hinds) though sides with Arthur and refuses to accept all the mystical mumbo-jumbo. Guess what happens next.

The Woman in Black comes from Hammer Studios, the production company famous for the great British horror films of the 60s and 70s starring the likes of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. Admittedly, this film is much more in the mould of those cult classics that Hammer’s initial re-entry into filmmaking, 2010’s American remake of Let the Right One In, but to a certain kind of film that aesthetic is an attractive selling point. Much of the action takes place in the haunted estate, a giant house on an island that’s routinely cut off from the mainland when the tide comes in and takes out the only road to and from.

Director James Watkins never fails to capitalize on the possibilities of isolation, and thus a lot of the film’s heavy lifting falls of Radcliffe who routinely has to act out entire scenes alone with only shadows, props, and the occasionally ghost to respond to. It’s hard not to shake the feeling that Radcliffe may be a little out of his depth on this one, but he puts up a valiant effort and pushes through the macabre to make Arthur honest and relatable. Sure, it’s initially hard to buy “Harry Potter” as a husband, father, and lawyer – it’s all a little mundane and mature – but once the haunting starts happening, you settle into a good place with the film. That and the scares. There are many good jumps in the film thanks to it’s old school approach, and some of those scares, at least in part, come from your concern for the main character.

The Woman in Black represents something old fashioned in the way to tell a horror story. Many of the frights and jumps are half psychological, and the story does such a decent job of enrapturing you that you fall for every little shadow and creak. There’s a certain charm to this, because outside of so-called “found footage” horrors, like the Paranormal Activity films, generally we, as audience members, are much too savvy to fall for such old school scares. The first two-thirds of the film are masterful, but when Arthur and Mr Daly set it to themselves to solve the problem, the script visits time-tested clichés when it comes to solving a ghost problem. The last half-hour creaks for entirely different reasons. I remained intrigued enough to see the pay off, but I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely fulfilled.

Still, I think kudos are deserved all around: director James Watkins, in only his second feature, plies his craft with tremendous skill and grace; screenwriter Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class) builds a credibly suspenseful world and a mystery that can at times be both surprising and familiar; and Daniel Radcliffe does a satisfactory job in a more grown-up role that requires him to be mostly emotionally distraught. But the unsung hero of the film is the island setting and production design of the haunted mansion. The rest of the elements come together resulting is a satisfying, if flawed, fright flick, but that wouldn’t matter if the film’s setting didn’t scream “horror movie.” Coming out of The Woman in Black, the winter air might not be the only chill you feel.