A near flawless horror film

Rating: 9/10 (19 February 2012)

I have now been to see The Woman in Black twice, apparently I am a masochist.
Haunting, chilling, jumpy, eerie, TERRIFYING - team these with snippets of dry humour and you get a really watchable film (or not if, like me, you spend the entire film with your hands over your eyes, cowering in your seat).
If you can look past the occasional stiff performance from Daniel Radcliffe and stop yourself from assuming that he is far too young to be playing the role of Arthur Kipps, The Woman in Black is a relatively flawless horror film.
This is not to say that there is none of the cheesy predictability that tends to go hand in hand with the horror genre, for example, "Don't worry about collecting me from this creepy old haunted house before it gets dark and the tide comes in, I'll work through the night." That was never going to be one of your finer ideas was it Arthur Kipps? Don't you know that the creepy stuff happens when its dark? And of course, the incessant build-up of anticipation followed by a loud crash and a musical crescendo. "Is it a ghost? Oh no its just a crow!"
From the get go, the lighting and the camera angles set the mood of unease, the constant gloom that encompasses the scenery hints at what is in store and the uneasiness and the tension do not cease at any point. And there are some genuinely terrifying moments.
It is the simplicity of the film that makes it what it is. It is has not succumbed to Hollywood and does not try too hard, save a few inevitable clichés. It had me scared of the dark, what more could you want from a horror film?
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