Old-fashioned ghost story told with panache in a return to form for Hammer Films with Radcliffe giving an excellently haunted turn

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2012)

THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012) *** Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Janet McTeer, Misha Handley, Jessica Raine, Sophie Stuckey, Shaun Dooley, Mary Stockley, Alexia Osbourne, Alfie Field, Victor McGuire, Cathy Sara, Tim McMullan. Old-fashioned ghost story told with panache in a return to form for Hammer Films with Radcliffe giving an excellently haunted turn as a bereaved widowed attorney in early turn-of-the 20th Century England who is sent to resolve a real estate brokerage where the mansion in question is, natch, haunted by a vengeance seeking ghost leaving its hamlet quavering in her bloody wake. Excellent production design by Kave Quinn is the real stand-out in this otherwise familiar but well told genre flick thanks to Jane Goldman's screenplay adaptation of Susan Hill's novel and James Watkins'direction skillfully gets the viewer on edge particularly the nerve-shredding sequence in which Radcliffe explores the manor in the pitch black with sights and sounds lurking every corner!