The Woman in Black

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Sophie Stuckey, Molly Harmon, Roger Allam, Lucy May Barker
Directed by: James Watkins
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
2012

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A lawyer (Daniel Radcliffe) visits a long-abandoned house, where he is haunted by a menacing woman in black.

Review:

Tim: I wasn't sure what to think about The Woman in Black. I was intrigued to see Daniel Radcliffe's first post-Harry Potter role. It was interesting that he chose a period horror movie. This film definitely had a lot of entertaining aspects to it, before the movie even started. I thought the film was scary, but ultimately a bit too cliched for its own good. The film showed some real promise, but falls short of being very good.

I liked the basic premise of the story. Daniel Radcliffe spends some time in a haunted house that is cut off from the rest of the world when the tide is in. This already creates a feeling of intense isolation, which increases the suspense factor. It doesn't matter so much why he's there, just that he really can't afford to leave.

I was shocked at how scary this movie is. I really wasn't prepared for that. I've seen a lot of horror movies, and this one had some of the most frightening, chilling imagery I've seen. The movie is really quite scary to watch- whether that's seeing a dead boy rise out of the mud, or the frightening image of the woman in black. There was a couple of moments that literally made me jump and curse the movie for being so scary. I loved that aspect of it. It's difficult to make a legitimately scary movie, but The Woman in Black pulls it off.

While the film gets a great deal of credit for being so frightening, the film also suffers from its many horror movie cliches. Having the woman in black fly towards the camera while screaming loudly is definitely scary, but in an annoying way. That's a cheap thrill, and this film had way, way too many of them. There's so many horror film cliches, and this movie suffers from the sheer number of them. This greatly, greatly hurts the overall quality of the movie. That was disappointing.

I mostly liked Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role. This was a good part for him because it was so unlike Harry Potter. He was decent in the lead role, but his greatest strength is that he draws audiences in and makes you relate to him. This performance might not have been great, but it suggests to me that he will have a successful career in Hollywood. The biggest problem I had with his performance was during some of the most frightening scenes in the film, he looked far too calm and nonchalant. He could certainly have been brave, but I was shocked at how little he reacted to the deathly images all around him. I'm not suggesting he should have screamed and cried, but I wanted to see that fear on his face more. There were a few moments when he really did embrace that fear and I loved those scenes. However, there were too many other moments when his performance was lacking.

The Woman in Black definitely features some truly chilling moments. It takes a lot for me to feel frightened during a horror movie, but I did here. However, Radcliffe needed to give a slightly better performance. The story needed to be a little more interesting. The climax was unexpected, but not as powerful as I'd hoped. This is certainly a decent movie, and there were aspects of the film that impressed me. In the end, however, the movie has a few too many flaws and I simply can't claim that this was a good movie.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



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