Well done ghost story

Rating: 6/10 (27 April 2017)

The Woman in Black, is the best known version of a story which began as a novel and was made into a 1989 TV movie and a play, and has been followed by a sequel film. Starring Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame, and featuring Ciarán Hinds (Mance Rayder in Game of Thrones) and Roger (DI Fred Thursday in Endeavour,) The Woman in Black is an old fashioned Gothic horror story, set in a creepy house in a remote weird village, where the disconsolate ghost of a woman who had lost her child takes vengeance by killing the children of the village. Radcliffe plays a young lawyer sent to sort out the affairs of the house's deceased owner. The film is a mixed bag: the early 20th century atmosphere is very vividly realized, and the film gets its effect from well done continual menace rather than gory special effects. It's been criticized for going through every horror film cliché in the books -- mysteriously hostile village yokels, a haunted mansion, furniture moving with no one in it, etc. -- though these standard characteristics are very well done. My main dissatisfaction personally is that the film sets us up for a basically happy ending which it then fails to deliver.
You'll want to watch this if you are a real fan of ghost stories. The CBS Films Blu-Ray disc is of excellent quality. Advisory: rated PG 13, the main caution is that some people (not everyone) say they find it genuinely scary.