Arthur Kipps is a widowed lawyer whose grief has endangered his career. When he is sent to a remote village to sort out the affairs of a recently deceased eccentric, it soon becomes clear that everyone in the town is keeping a terrible secret. Although the locals try to hide the town's tragic history from Kipps, he soon learns that his client's house is haunted by the ghost of a woman who is looking for someone and something she had lost, and until she finds it, no one is safe from her vengeance.
Genres: Horror, Adaptation, Thriller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy Release Date: February 3, 2012 MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for for thematic material and violence/disturbing images) Distributor: CBS Films
Cast And Credits
Starring:
Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Janet McTeer, Liz White, Alisa Khazanova
Directed by:
James Watkins
Produced by:
Richard Jackson, Brian Oliver, Paul Ritchie, Ben Holden
A creaking, shrieking haunted-house amusement and a solid addition to the recently resurrected Hammer Films — the company where Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing once reigned — "The Woman in Black" makes the most of its old-fashioned virtues. Duded out in a period frock coat and pocket-watch chain for his first post-Potter film role, Daniel Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a British lawyer who, years after his wife, Stella (Sophie Stuckey), died in childbirth, has the haunted eyes of the eternal mourner. It’s no wonder too, given that Stella, a beauty in luminous white, periodically hovers around him, either because she’s a ghost or a figment of his enduring longing and grief.
The story, based on a 1983 novel by Susan Hill and adapted by Jane Goldman (who had a hand in writing "Kick-Ass" and "The Debt"), weaves together a compendium of familiar themes. Arthur’s employer, who’s all but run out of patience with his doleful solicitor, gives him one last chance to prove his worth: he’s to travel to the remote village of Crythin Gifford to sort out the large estate of a woman who’s recently died. So Arthur parks his son with the nanny, boards a train and heads straight into the creeping mists and mysteries of an isolated hamlet where the children scatter when he approaches, and the adults have darts in their eyes if not pitchforks in hand.
Something wicked does come, of course, slowly and at times with unsettling effectiveness. It seems there’s a ghost troubling the area, haunting the estate and sowing great misery, though appearances, like apparitions, can be deceiving. Bewilderingly, most of the villagers treat Arthur with unexplained hostility, glowering and slamming doors. Undaunted, he secures a sympathetic ally in a friendly local, Mr. Daily (Ciaran Hinds) — who drives a Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce, indicating, along with the clothing, that the story takes place between 1907 and the start of World War I — and a strange confederate in Mr. Daily’s dotty wife (Janet McTeer, enjoying herself). With their aid Arthur begins poking about the estate that, set high on an isolated marsh, comes with both gravestones and spooks.
Schooled in the art of the quiet boo, Mr. Watkins fills the film with squeaking doors and floorboards, pools of black, long silences and an assortment of moldering toys. Less gore is more here, and what a relief. "The Woman in Black" isn’t especially scary, but it keeps you on edge, and without the usual vivisectionist imagery. Mr. Watkins doesn’t paint the screen red; he daubs it on, a restraint that serves his slow-building story and creates a nice chromatic contrast with a palette that’s heavy on white, black, dun brown and gray. Here, when a young girl chokes up a spittoon of blood, the red splattering across her creamy pale skin, the image keeps on giving.
Mr. Radcliffe makes a sturdy, sympathetic center for the tale, even if the ghost of Potter past hovers in his every gesture. Despite Mr. Radcliffe’s best efforts (including the choice to go period), the lingering Potter effect is only natural given that Hogwarts was the actor’s training ground. It will take time before many of us will be able to see the actor instead of his famous character, and time for him to shake that role off too, though it helps that Mr. Radcliffe is no longer encumbered by Harry’s mop and especially his glasses. A movie actor’s eyes can be his most expressive tool, one that Mr. Radcliffe, who has a pretty blue pair framed by thick brows — the eyes suggest watery lightness while the brows convey a heavy weight — wasn’t able to make full use of as Harry.
Those eyes get a workout in "The Woman in Black," but Mr. Watkins’s smartest choice is to make use of Mr. Radcliffe’s long tenure as an action star. There isn’t much by way of dashing heroics here, but Arthur is almost continually on the move, including during a successful long and nearly wordless interlude in which he wanders through the vacated estate, its snaking hallways, locked and suddenly unlocked rooms alive with scraping, rasping and murmuring. At times Arthur looks so small engulfed in all that darkness, and so helpless, much like one of the children who haunt the story without investing it with much feeling. With Mr. Watkins’s creeping camerawork it’s Arthur who keeps the story steadily moving forward inch by inch, shiver by shiver.
A creaking, shrieking haunted-house amusement and a solid addition to the recently resurrected Hammer Films — the company where Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing once reigned — "The Woman in Black" makes the most of its old-fashioned virtues. Duded out in a period frock coat and pocket-watch chain for his first post-Potter film role, Daniel Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a British lawyer who, years after his wife, Stella (Sophie Stuckey), died in childbirth, has the haunted eyes of the eternal mourner. It’s no wonder too, given that Stella, a beauty in luminous white, periodically hovers around him, either because she’s a ghost or a figment of his enduring longing and grief.
Something wicked does come, of course, slowly and at times with unsettling effectiveness. It seems there’s a ghost troubling the area, haunting the estate and sowing great misery, though appearances, like apparitions, can be deceiving. Bewilderingly, most of the villagers treat Arthur with unexplained hostility, glowering and slamming doors. Undaunted, he secures a sympathetic ally in a friendly local, Mr. Daily (Ciaran Hinds) — who drives a Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce, indicating, along with the clothing, that the story takes place between 1907 and the start of World War I — and a strange confederate in Mr. Daily’s dotty wife (Janet McTeer, enjoying herself). With their aid Arthur begins poking about the estate that, set high on an isolated marsh, comes with both gravestones and spooks. 
Those eyes get a workout in "The Woman in Black," but Mr. Watkins’s smartest choice is to make use of Mr. Radcliffe’s long tenure as an action star. There isn’t much by way of dashing heroics here, but Arthur is almost continually on the move, including during a successful long and nearly wordless interlude in which he wanders through the vacated estate, its snaking hallways, locked and suddenly unlocked rooms alive with scraping, rasping and murmuring. At times Arthur looks so small engulfed in all that darkness, and so helpless, much like one of the children who haunt the story without investing it with much feeling. With Mr. Watkins’s creeping camerawork it’s Arthur who keeps the story steadily moving forward inch by inch, shiver by shiver.
