As scary as a 'Ghost Train' ride ...

Rating: 6/10 (18 March 2012)

At first sight, James Watkins' film looks formatted to please an audience thirsty for thrills and heart-pounding experiences, it stars Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter in a first adult-to-be- taken-seriously role (and as a matter of fact, I did took him seriously) and the title is perfect to convey both a sensation of fear or mystery, I wish it could have been more original than "The Woman in Black" but as an audience-pulling title, it's perfectly marketed.
Now, reviewing "The Woman in Black" is quite a challenge as far as objectivity is concerned. As a horror film, it did one hell of a job because it truly scared the hell out of me, but as one IMDb user pointed out, there is a huge difference between making someone jump out of his seat and actually scaring him. By the way, I couldn't believe a veteran critic like Roger Ebert missed those tricks, so blatantly overused, well a bit too much in a film that tries to use some sophistication in an Edwardian English setting (I would have said Victorian until I noticed there were cars). "The Woman in Black" should have inspired a delightful to read cynical review, but he sounds satisfied then allow me to more bitter. It's not against the film, overall, it was short enough not to become quickly unbearable.
The problem in "The Woman in Black" is that the film succeeds in creating a harrowing and haunting atmosphere, and Daniel Racliffe's performance carries the fears and the interrogation of the typical protagonist who doesn't know where he's putting his foot in but must do it because it's part of his mission. So, for a film that had all the technical predispositions to be a great mystery thriller, cinematography, directing, acting and editing, I couldn't believe it would go for so many cheap attempts to scare audience regardless of the context and the content of the story. On that level, "The Woman in Black" was as scary as a ghost train, where most of the frights and shocks rely on the surprise effect, as efficient as they are predictable, which cancels out the merit of the film.
Indeed, watching "The Woman in Black" made me realize how it was easy to scare people, I can't count how many persons in the theater screamed and I almost had to cover my eyes at some parts of the film, not because I was genuinely scared but because I knew something was going to happen, yes it was scary but when you expect to be scared, the whole experience consists on not being surprised by a disturbing image that just pops up in the screen. It's just as if James Watkins, the director (so you can remember his name), took to its fullest the overused concept of some Youtube videos: a quiet and comforting moment and then suddenly, a screaming face appears to instantly increase your heart pulses, an idea already based on the 'ghost train' principle.
And what's even worse for the film's attempts to scare its audience is in the setting of the haunted mansion, so full of weird and hard to watch objects, so ugly that it only takes a close-up or a sudden shot on one of them to perturb the audience. All the mechanical toys, dolls and automatons seem to belong to the house for the only purpose of 'appearing', nothing else justifies their presence, at one point, one appears inoffensive and then it starts playing drums so suddenly that again, we wonder why Watkins didn't trust his story's own material. Well, the monkey playing drums had its effect okay, but was Watkins so desperately eager to scare us that he needed to let one whole sequence relying on that.
"The Woman in Black" doesn't trust its own potential, and never gives enough credit to their characters, nor does it trust our intelligence. The film evolves in such an enigmatic atmosphere that we have no clue about what's going on. But it's part of the genre and we expect a mind-blowing experience coming near the end, until the protagonist, his name was Kipps (I had to check as I totally forgot about it after the film) enters the haunted house, and we start to make some vague correlations between the presence of a ghostly figure, a woman in black screaming like a vulgar subliminal Internet-prank image, and a series of disturbing children's deaths, and their deaths would be indeed efficient if the build-ups were not so overdone.
Anyway, before this review starts to sound too cynical, I want to point out that anything beyond what I said worked decently. I was amazed by Daniel Radcliffe's photogenic look, convincing as a tormented soul with a wound in his heart, the atmosphere of the film have some reminiscent shots of "The Shining", like the long and tortuous road that lead to the land where Kipps had to work on the estate. And the hostility of the population nicely contrasted with his interesting friendship with a rich landowner named  whatever. Anyway, near the center of the film, the story started to be easier to follow and not uninteresting. A feeling that doesn't last unfortunately when it starts to scare for the sake of scares.
Is it me or I feel like I'm repeating myself? Well, I guess it's time for me to conclude by saying that the film had quite a powerful ending that seemed to belong to another film. If "The Woman is Black" had the same gripping intensity than the last scene, it would have made so many cheap tricks like the overuse of shadows, the ominous music and the whole subliminal startling moments totally needless. "The Woman in Black" is not a bad film, but unfortunately falls too much in the category of exercises in style and  to use in my turn an overused line, with no substance.