Review: The Woman in Black

Film: The Woman in Black  (U/A)
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Janet McTeer, Sophie Stuckey, Liz White
Director: James Watkins
Rating: ***1/2

After the insipid The Resident, Hammer Films bounces back with The Woman in Black. Adapted from the 1983 gothic horror novel by Susan Hill, the film is set in Edwardian England.

Daniel Radcliffe plays a melancholic solicitor Arthur Kipps whose wife died tragically at childbirth. The jaded Kipps, who raises a young son Joseph, is warned by his firm that he is one slip up away from being fired and must head to a remote coastal town to deal with the legal affairs of a Eel Marsh House, a spooky decrepit mansion formerly owned by the family of one Alice Drablow.

Surrounded on all sides by marshland and with a narrow winding causeway (which is rendered inaccessible by the high tide), the house is shunned by harrowed locals, who also look upon Kipps with disdain.

While Kipps finds a rare friendship between the wealthy Sam Daily (Hinds) and his wife Elizabeth (McTeer), he begins to witness strange phenomena during his stay at Eel Marsh House. Could they be linked to the perplexing deaths of the town’s children?

While The Woman in Black doesn’t reinvent the wheel on how to get people to jump out of their seats (The sightings of the apparition of the titular woman and other frightening visuals are duly accompanied by blasts of music), it is nonetheless well-crafted. Atmospheric and gloomy, at the heart of the film is the kind of ghost story in the eerie vein of the works of MR James or Algernon Blackwood, which you don’t see much of anymore.

The visual methods employed by The Woman in Black in order to send that shiver up your spine are commendable such as one speechless episode involving a candle-holding Kipps roaming the house while it is in a clear state of agitation.

While Radcliffe lacks the maturity which the role of a grieving widower and doting father demands, he gives a decent performance when it comes to moping about and being gobsmacked by weirdness. Hinds in his supporting role proves to us why he’s in pretty much every movie you’ve seen last year. McTeer, as somewhat deranged Mrs Daily, contributes greatly to the film’s spookiness.

If fog, mossy tombstones and the furtive glares of irate and superstitious locals go a longer way for you than knife-wielding slashers, found footage and gore, this is one film you can’t afford to miss.