There isn’t much of a twist to The Woman in Black’s haunted house tale: man goes to a creepy, old house, runs into an angry ghost, and mayhem ensues. That standard horror plot would be fine if the execution were thrilling, every scare sending a chill down the spine. But star Daniel Radcliffe’s first post-Potter outing has less life than its spectral inhabitants, with impressive early 20th century production design, sharp cinematography and solid performances barely keeping it breathing. Much like the film’s titular spirit, The Woman in Black hangs in limbo, haunting the quality divide.
Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) is barely holding on in life, having lost
his wife during the birth of their child and struggling to stay employed
as a lawyer. To stay afloat, Kipps reluctantly takes on the job of
settling the legal affairs of a recently deceased widow. Living in her
home, the you-should-have-known-this-house-was-haunted-by-the-name Eel
Marsh House, Kipps quickly realizes there’s more to the woman’s life
than he realized, unraveling her mysterious connections to a string of
child deaths and a ghostly presence in the home. Even with pressure from
the townspeople, Kipps continues his investigation, hoping to right any
wrongs he’s accidentally caused by putting the violent Woman in Black
to rest.
Radcliffe bounces back and forth between the dusty mansion, made even
more forbidding by the high tides that routinely cut it off from
civilization, and a town full of wide-eyed psychos who live in fear of
the kid-killing Woman in Black. Even after losing his own son, Kipps’
neighbor Daily (Ciarán Hinds) is convinced the “ghost” is a fairy tales,
while Daily’s wife (Oscar nominee Janet McTeer) finds herself
occasionally possessed by her dead son, scribbling forbidding message to
Arthur about future murders. Arthur wrestles with the two extreme
points of view, but Woman in Black doesn’t spend much time exploring the
hardships of a skeptic, quickly slipping back into standard horror mode
at every opportunity. When they have time to play around with the
twisted scenario, all three actors are top-notch, but rarely are they
asked to do anything but gasp and react in a terrified manner.
Director James Watkins (Eden Lake) conjures up some legitimately
spooky imagery, leaving the space behind Arthur empty or cutting to an
object in the room that could potentially come back to haunt our
befuddled hero, all in an effort to tickle our imaginations. But like so
many “jump scare” horror flicks, Woman in Black relies heavily on the
“Bah-BAAAAAAH” music cues, obtrusively orchestrated by composer Marco
Beltrami. A rocking chair, a swinging door and the reveal of a
decomposing zombie ghost lady could work on their own, especially in
such a well-designed environment as Eel Marsh House, but Woman in Black
insists on zapping a charge of musical electricity straight into our
brain, forcing us to shiver in the least graceful way possible.
The script by Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class) tries to
throw back to the slow burn, character-first horror films of classic
cinema, while injecting the sensibilities modern filmmaking. The
combination turns Woman in Black into visually appealing, dramatically
bland ghost story. Radcliffe still has a long career ahead of him, as
Woman in Black does suggest, but this isn’t the movie that get people
thinking there’s life after Potter.
Movie Review The Woman In Black 2012 English Film : Super Horror, the
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