Horror film employs old-fashioned, haunted house tricks for audience thrills
Now that Daniel Radcliffe has graduated from Hogwarts, it’s time for him to hang the robe, throw away the glasses and get some surgery for that scar.
Fresh off of Broadway, Radcliffe is “back in black” and his first post-Harry Potter role has him starring in a traditional horror film, “The Woman in Black.”
Director James Watkins (“Eden Lake” (2008)) and screenwriter Jane Goldman, who co-wrote the screenplays to “Kick-Ass” (2010) and “X-Men: First Class” (2011), create a mediocre haunted house film that pays homage to its predecessors.
Radcliffe trades in his elder wand for a Victorian lawyer’s pen as he plays Arthur Kipps, a young barrister with a 4-year-old son whose career has been on the edge of collapse since the death of his wife.
Given one last chance to save his career, he takes a job that involves going to a remote village and sorting out the papers of a recently deceased old woman. Upon his arrival, Kipps suspects something is amiss when villagers, even his rich new friends (Ciaran Hinds and Janet McTeer), refuse to talk about the deceased woman.
When Kipps begins the paperwork at the deceased woman’s ominous house, he experiences a series of unnatural occurrences within the house: whispers in the shadows, a rocking chair moving by itself, a music box that plays without being wound and a ghostly woman who plagues the town’s children.
Once the movie’s chills and scares begin, “The Woman in Black” becomes an old-fashioned haunted house flick, with Watkins cramming in every trick in the book: doors suddenly locked and unlocked, creaking sounds around every corner and lights suddenly turned off. Nothing new, yes, but Watkins does make effective use of the house’s Gothic mise-en-scene.
However, the film does show an unfortunate reliance on shock tactics. This method does work to get audiences to jump out of seats, but after a while, the “sudden loud noise” effect played whenever something pops onto the screen gets repetitive, and the moments feel borrowed from Japanese horror films like “The Ring” (2002) and “The Grudge” (2004).
The movie’s real scares and chills, however, come from the richly detailed atmosphere that greatly compliments the sinister, Gothic feel of the entire film. Cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones plunges the audience into a murky environment while Watkins makes use of the hallways and corners to give us that “something bad is about to happen” feeling.
Screenwriter Jane Goldman adapts the screenplay from the Susan Hill novel of the same name. Her take on the story really doesn’t do anything for the audience except leave them waiting for the next scare, and effects ends up substituting for the story.
Despite this, Goldman does give the movie a bittersweet ending different from the book’s, one that isn’t exactly happy but fits the movie’s overall emotional hook.
Now on to the big question of whether this role will help Radcliffe break free of his Harry Potter shadow. It’s difficult to say.
Radcliffe looks too young for his role but his performance is actually convincing. This role requires him to convincingly look shocked at every sudden scare while walking around the house. The fact that his character doesn’t speak much makes it more difficult to judge his acting, but he still manages to carry the film with his performance.
“The Woman in Black” contains as many negatives as positives. Its attempts at shock scares are ineffective and it’s easy to see where the story is going, but the atmosphere serves its purpose and Radcliffe handles the lead role with confidence, taking his first step into mainstream cinema outside of “Harry Potter.”