A lot of bark, not much bite

Rating: 4/10 (2 January 2014)

"Meh" was the feeling I was left with at the end of 'The Woman in Black.' "Meh" to the story, "meh" to the acting and even more "meh" to the attempted frights throughout the film. There's not a lot of good stuff here. The last 10-15 minutes raise the bar a little (at least on the scare front) and then a questionable ending finally seals the fate on this one and we are able to finally turn it off.
Daniel Radcliffe gives a very average performance. It feels like we are watching a boy playing a man's role. Taking on a horror movie first thing after the 'Harry Potter' series seemed a strange decision to me. One reason could have been very few lines for him to learn, which may have sounded appealing after some quite long editions to the 'Harry Potter' series had him working long hours to learn them all I'm sure. It takes you to the about the halfway point to realise there really isn't a lot of dialogue and that that there is is quite clunky and poorly written especially for a period piece.
The biggest annoyance this film provides however is the countless amount of attempted scares (mostly on Radcliffe's character) which come to absolutely nothing. Soon nothing becomes frightening in the least because all this ghost seems to have in its armoury is trying to scare people. Of course it's revealed it can do a little more that, but more of a focus on this and less screen time with Radcliffe would have benefited this movie immensely.
As I said the last 10-15 minutes pick things up a bit and do some redeeming. The ending is to each there own. Personally I was reasonably neutral over it, but if I had to lean one way I'd say I didn't like it as much. There are much better, more atmospheric and effective horrors out there at the moment (especially 'The Conjuring' if you haven't gotten around to seeing it yet), but if you feel like you've seen them all and choose to give this one a go just don't expect anything too special.