The Woman in Black (2012)

Every horror film has rules. The great ones spend the first act or so establishing them, but then they take the next step and break them. A bad horror film just sticks with the same rules from beginning to end. Take, for instance, the original Paranormal Activity. One of the rules in that film is very simple: during the day, all is safe. Only at night does the demon come out to play. This changes late in the film, and since the rules have changed all sense of safety is gone. That’s how a good horror film keeps you on your feet. The new horror film The Woman in Black establishes a similar set of rules, but it makes the vital mistake of never taking its premise to the next level. There isn’t much plot to this film to begin with, and the script is just a string of excuses to strand the protagonist in a haunted mansion. Some moments are very well-directed, and the film has an effectively creepy atmosphere, but The Woman in Black ultimately feels more like a subpar amusement park attraction than a full cinematic experience. It spooks you for two hours then allows you to go on with the rest of your day.

In his first major post-Harry Potter role, Daniel Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a young widower who is sent out to the creepy Eel Marsh by his law firm to take care of the late Alice Drablow’s estate. This will involve paperwork, selling the house, finding a will, what have you. When he arrives in town, he finds that his presence isn’t entirely welcome by the locals, save for the friendly Sam Daily (Ciarán Hinds). He also discovers that Drablow’s estate doesn’t seem like a normal house so much as it resembles Luigi’s Mansion, and once inside he begins to see and hear things, including the possible ghost of a woman who—you guessed it—wears black. A series of other unfortunate events soon begin around town, and Arthur begins to wonder if he (or she) has anything to do with it, and if it can be stopped.

The Woman in Black is the second film directed by James Watkins, whose first film was Eden Lake. All in all, his work here is admirable and suggests that he has some good filmmaking ahead of him. The best sequence in the film follows Arthur as he chooses to spend an entire night in the haunted house, and we follow him as he is slowly engulfed by the dark energy around him. It’s mostly thrilling stuff, but everything around that scene is just a whole lot of nothing. The characters aren’t that smart or appealing, and the plot is more concerned with getting to the next jump scare than making any real sense. The most effective moments in The Woman in Black aren’t the scares that are accompanied by composer Marco Beltrami’s irritating musical stings. The best moments are a result of Watkins letting the creepiness slowly build up to an unbearable boiling point. If the film was less focused on going for the easy shock, it might have had a more lasting impact.

I’ll say that Radcliffe is quite good here, though he isn’t required to do much more than stand around and look alternately concerned, terrified or confused. (I’m not even sure he has all that many lines in the movie.) The highest compliment I can give is that I never once thought “Oh, hey Harry! Off to Hogwarts again, aren’t we?” So, that’s a start. Hinds is slightly more memorable, but that’s because his character’s got much more substance to him, though even then his actions seem to serve the desires of the script more than they happen organically. For a while he’s a skeptic of all this haunted house hocus pocus, but when he starts to change his mind the reasoning just seems to be the result of lazy writing.

Therein lies the biggest problem with The Woman in Black: it never goes deeper than the surface. It never explores the psychology of the characters, such as the skeptics and the believers. Sure it got under my skin a handful of times, but it never reached that point when I sat up in my seat and thought that the game had changed. Instead it continues to follow the aforementioned rules that were set up in the first act all the way through to the end with few surprises. What applied at the beginning still applies when the credits roll, and that’s disappointing. Even the final scene is a missed opportunity. It’s not actively bad—and to a degree it’s quite bold—but it never provides the emotional catharsis it should. It just happens, and then the movie ends. It comes with a thud because none of the movie before was willing to do the heavy lifting that would make that moment work. Like the rest of The Woman in Black, we are expected to sit back and accept everything without questioning it or asking for more. That won’t quite do it for me. A few well-executed “boo!” moments can only get you so far.

Grade: C+