Decent period set Hammer horror ghost story.

Rating: 5/10 (22 March 2012)

The Woman in Black is set in Engand at the turn of the 20th Century & starts in London as junior lawyer Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is told to travel to a small coastal village called Crythin Grifford to settle the estate of the recently deceased Alice Brablow & sell Eel Marsh House where Alice lived until her death. Arriving there Kipps finds the local villagers very unwelcoming, managing to pay someone to take him to Eel Marsh House so he can do the paperwork Kipps spends a few hours there & notices strange figures that he realises are ghost's & in particular the haunting vision of the evil woman in black. Kipps investigates the history of Eel Marsh House & discovers a terrible past & that the sinister woman in black is a vengeful ghost who wants to take revenge for her own son's death by killing all the villagers children...
This English, Canadian & Sweedish co-production was directed by James Watkins & is the fourth film from Hammer Studios since it's revival, having said that the new Hammer is just a brand as it uses a well known name merely to sell genre product picked up for release & produced by other's whereas the original Hammer of the 60's & 70's had a regular in-house team of producers & actor's & made their own films. The Woman in Black is based on a novel by Susan Hill originally published in 1983 which was turned into a stage play & made into the television film The Woman in Black (1989) which I have not seen so cannot compare the two. The script here was written by Jane Goldman (the wife of Jonathan Ross) & feels a little bit empty at times, the long stretches where Kipps stays in Eel Marsh House & the way it sort of fizzles out at the end with a surreal climax & no great reason behind anything like why bother find the boy's body & putting it in the coffin? It doesn't do anything. The local villagers are forgotten about halfway through, the line at the end 'your not my mother' also confuses things further. Lasting about 90 minutes it moves along at a fair pace although it does try to develop the story & build the atmosphere even if it doesn't quite work at times.
One thing that The Woman in Black as going for it is some wonderful production design, The Woman in Black looks fabulous with the Victorian period setting & the creepy old house sat on an isolated island. A lot of time & effort obviously went into the visual style of this, the CGI computer effects are also used sparingly & are pretty good. There's no real gore here, a young girl coughs up some blood & a couple of decomposing skeletons are seen but otherwise The Woman in Black tries to create a sense of dread rather than assault the senses with CGI & special effects. One aspect that may annoy some people are the constant fake scares, scenes where you know something is going to happen only for some mundane occurrence to make a loud noise like a tap suddenly spurting dirty water or something suddenly appearing like a screeching bird. I loved the opening scene which is quite eerie as three young girls suddenly get up jump out of their window's together.
With a supposed budget of about $17,000,000 this did very well at the box-office over becoming one of the most successful horror films released in British cinemas, this was more successful than any of Hammer's original films that screened during the 60's the 70's in fact. Cotterstock Hall in Northamptonshire stood in for Eels Marsh House & it does a fine job. The acting is solid from a good cast, Radcliffe looks a bit young to be a father here but that's nit picking I suppose.
The Woman in Black is a solid supernatural horror thriller that tries to build up tension & suspense through it's story rather than gore & CGI which is admirable enough I suppose, while it drags a bit & maybe the story isn't quite as deep or as satisfying as it could have been The Woman in Black is an old fashioned haunted house horror film with modern production values. I liked it.