As the first film to be released by the British
horror-film-specialist production company Hammer Film Productions since their
recent resurrection, and as Daniel Radcliffe's first post-Potter movie, James
Watkins' new horror The Woman in Black, an adaptation of Susan
Hill's acclaimed ghost story, marks a new beginning in multiple senses. But
does it show promise for the futures of both Hammer and Radcliffe?
The very first scene, where
three children playing with their toy dolls suddenly stop as if in a trance
before throwing themselves out of a window, certainly suggests that Hammer's
return is something to get excited about. The scene is both chilling and
artistically shot, especially the opening close-up of a toy tea-pot pouring
imaginary water at the children's make-believe tea party, an image that early
on establishes the eerie motif of ghosts. The toy dolls too are effectively creepy,
and reappear throughout the film as ghostly presences that give the illusion
that the characters are being watched and their movements followed all the time.
The film never quite
matches these early high expectations, but it still makes for an effective
horror. The plot follows a mourning and financially struggling young lawyer
named Arthur Kibbs (Daniel Radcliffe), who having been assigned the task of
travelling to a remote estate in the English countryside begins to see
frightening visions of a spooky woman dressed in a black mourning gown. Setting
out to be a straightforward horror The Woman in Black needs to
have enough scares and jumps to satisfy horror enthusiasts, and there are
plenty of such unsettling scenes. The Woman in Black of the title makes for an
effectively scary figure, expressing plenty of rage and insanity in brief
close-ups, such as when she appears as a reflection next to Arthur's face in
the mirror. Director Watkins also makes clever use of objects for scares, like
a violently swinging rocking chair and the aforementioned dolls.
With all the focus on
scares and jumps, the characters in the film are somewhat undeveloped and the
plot a little thin. Characters like the landowner Sam Daily (Ciarán Hinds), his
wife (Janet McTeer) and even the Woman in Black herself (Liz White) are all
well acted, but neither given important roles nor much biography. Mrs Daily in
particular is underused, as she puts in a briefly captivating performance as a
mourning mother who fills the lonely void left by her dead children with a pair
of small dogs, and who frighteningly lapses into seemingly-possessed trances in
which she carves disturbing images into wood; but we only see her in a few
scenes. To be fair the film prioritizes spooks over these other elements of
characterization, but more development would have made for a more complex film.
Daniel Radcliffe is however
given lots to do as the protagonist of the film, but isn't entirely convincing.
He fails to express the wide variations of emotions, which shifts between loss,
grief and fear, which his character experiences during the film. As the
character we are left alone with in the haunted house a better performance was
needed to adequately hammer home the scares. Admittedly the script does not
give him much dialogue to work with and perhaps didn't give the young actor
much opportunity to express himself, but we are never convinced of his grief or
fear. The haunted house itself, though a little clichéd as an eerie isolated
estate full of props like creepy dolls and dim candlelight, is a well crafted
location, and thanks to impressive shots of the marshland and scenes filmed on
location we really get a feel for the grey remoteness of the British
countryside.
Though there are better and
scarier films that deal with similar issues, such as the Spanish-Mexican
horror The Orphanage, director James Watkins certainly deserves
plaudits for the admirable intention of making a horror film that chooses to
scare through implication and the imagination rather than lazily using gore and
vulgarity, making The Woman in Black a welcome addition to the
horror oeuvre. We hope for a future of similarly natured horror movies.