SCREEN
The Woman In Black
(12A) 105mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
As creaky, traditional and scary as a ghost train, The Woman In Black is watched impassively by its star, Daniel Radcliffe.
REVIEW
Arthur Kipps is having an awfully bad time. His wife has died in childbirth and, if he was looking for sympathy from his boss, forget it.
"This is not a charity," he says dispatching young Kipps off to the chilly North to wind up the Eel Marsh House estate.
And, if that wasn't enough then "this is your final chance" says Roger Allam via Jane Goldman's on the nose script.
No turning back then for fearless Kipps. Not only his boss but the locals are against him as he ventures along the causeway to the spit of land containing a house, a surfeit of graves and staring stone angels.
There is something off about the house. The stiff-collared solicitor sees and hears things and everyone in the village is dead keen that he grab his bags and head back to London before something terr... no, too late.
All those children disappearing, dying, some right in front of his eyes as though his lonely vigils in the house and their foreshortened tenure on earth were connected or something.
And if the children are dying what about his own child, following him up at the weekend?
The Woman In Black is a ghost train in a world full of snuff movies and no harm in that.
It is old school gothic with the thrills coming from the work of the sound engineer rather than the machinations of the blood caster and the offal keeper.
This is Hammer straight out of the '70s with rocking chairs rocking and pale faces at windows and Bagpuss nurseries gone to the dark side.
Daniel Radcliffe spends his time inching his way round sooty corridors with a candle, occasionally an axe but always with that fathomless expression, as though his algebra homework has received a C- when he thought he was a dead cert for a B.
We like Ciaran Hinds and his grief-raddled denial. We love Jane McTeer and her feverish madness. We get Shaun Dooley's fear and Mary Stockley's tears. We love the whole Amazing Mr Blunden vibe.
Not sure if we get Daniel though. Not convinced. He drifts through the ordeal, unperturbed and unmoved. We never fear for him because he never looks vulnerable. Or even involved.
Too harsh? Perhaps. But the point is moot because he plays second fiddle to the tricksy house and the vengeful dame who is, let's face it, stark raving bonkers in a wildly entertaining way.
So what's the hook in this Edwardian ghost fest? Here it is. Slow as a raking fingernail and sure as the gaze of a dead girl's ghoul, the story begins to get to work. To grip and intrigue the impassive heart. It is the story, the unearthing of disturbing histories and deft twists, that wins through.
The tension comes and goes, the shocks are telegraphed like an ascent of Everest but there's no escaping the pull of this well-constructed chiller.
