Alison Rowat's Review
Daniel Radcliffe shows he’s all grown up and ready for acting life after Harry Potter by playing a grieving dad in this classic British chiller.
Adapted from Susan Hill’s bestseller and play, director James Watkins (Eden Lake) keeps the mood nicely creepy as lawyer Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) is sent to a coastal town to sort out the estate of a deceased client – and much else besides.
Radcliffe is too young to be playing anyone’s dad but he does anguished and half-terrified rather well, and the adaptation by Jane Goldman (Kick Ass) keeps the story tearing along.
Paul Greenwood's Review
After 30 years of dormancy, legendary horror production company Hammer returned to the big screen recently with the ultimately disappointing likes of Let Me In and The Resident.
Their latest release, The Woman in Black, seems like a perfect opportunity to really reclaim their status.
Adapted from the novel by Susan Hill, it’s a ghost story that’s already been turned into a hugely successful stage production, and offers the chance of a throwback to proper Hammer films of yore, to the high production values and Edwardian mists and shadows that defined their best work.
Daniel Radcliffe plays Arthur, a young solicitor still haunted by his wife’s death. When he’s sent to a remote northern village to settle the affairs at a spooky old mansion, everyone is in a hurry to get rid of him, and it’s not long before he’s being troubled by noises and visions and the threat of an evil presence in the house.
In Radcliffe’s first grown-up role post-Potter, his dark features command the screen and on the surface he seems well cast. Sadly this only lasts until he opens his mouth, at which point he becomes a boy again, and much too young for the part.
But as creepy, old fashioned ghostly scares go, this certainly has its moments.
The house is reachable only by a causeway, cut off at high water, and there’s real unease in this isolation. A black-clad figure is glimpsed in corners and shadows, these flashes so persuasive that you start to see her even when there’s nothing there.
Employing a drip-drip-drip attack, whispers build to a sucker punch, but its greatest power to unsettle often coming from the simplest image: a rocking chair, whether a door is open or closed.
The woman in black herself is a truly terrifying creation, but it’s a shame when it starts to resort to jump scares, as Arthur sees more and more explicitly things that are actually “there”, and as it ramps up in ferocity, something is lost.
There’s a suspicion that its strongest cards are played by around the halfway point, and that there’s no more room for things to escalate, casting a serious doubt on the suitability of the material for the big screen.
There simply isn’t enough narrative depth or variety, something that could be papered over in the play, and changes and additions made are unsuccessful.
So while the film of The Woman in Black is moderately effective much of the time, if you get the chance to see the stage version, take it.