One of the most genuinely frightening films of the 21st century

Rating: 8/10 (17 March 2012)

Susan Hill's novel "The Woman in Black" is one of the most famous ghost stories of recent years, reminiscent of the classic works of M R James. A theatrical adaptation has been running in London since 1989, making it the longest-running current West End production apart from "The Mousetrap", and it was made into a television film, also in 1989. (I won't compare the 2012 film with that version, as I have not seen it since its first television screening 23 years ago).
The story is set in the Edwardian era. A young solicitor named Arthur Kipps (a name Hill borrowed from H G Wells) is assigned by his firm to handle the estate of a woman named Alice Drablow, who has recently died, and travels to her manor house, Eel Marsh House, located on an island in the coastal marshes. (Exactly where in England the house is supposed to be situated is never made clear- probably somewhere in the North-East, although the scenes of the house itself were filmed at Layer Marney Tower in Essex).
Eel Marsh House has a tragic history and a sinister reputation in the locality. We learn that when Alice was a young woman her sister Jennet Humfrye gave birth to a child out of wedlock. To avoid a scandal, Alice and her husband brought the boy up as their own son, but he died in a tragic accident at the age of nine and Jennet, maddened by grief, committed suicide. It is said that ever since then the house has been haunted by Jennet's vengeful spirit and that every appearance of her ghost, known as the "woman in black", presages the death of a child in the neighbourhood. Kipps has also had a tragedy in his life; his wife died in childbirth and he has been left to bring up their young son alone.
Kipps faces hostility from local people, who fear that any intrusion into Eel Marsh House will provoke the ghost to take the lives of more of their children, but befriends Sam Daily, a local landowner. Although Daily is a sceptic who does not believe in the legends surrounding the old house, Jennet's ghost proves to be all too real. It could hardly be otherwise in a film of this nature; nobody is going to make a horror film based upon the premise that belief in ghosts is all superstitious nonsense.
"The Woman in Black" was produced by the revived Hammer Film Productions, the most famous name in British horror, but it is very different to those rather camp Gothic tales, generally starring Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee, that they churned out in the sixties and seventies. It is in many ways an old fashioned ghost story, reminiscent of Alejandro Amenabar's "The Others" from around a decade ago. Whereas most modern horror films (especially those of the "torture porn" sub-genre) rely upon explicitly showing us acts of violence in all their gory detail, "The Woman in Black" returns to the tradition of films like "Cat People", "The Spiral Staircase" and "The Haunting" of relying upon the power of suggestion. The ghostly Jennet, for example, is only seen in brief glimpses. The difference is that director James Watkins, like Amenabar but unlike the directors of those other films, has at his disposal all the special-effect resources of the modern cinema.
The result is one of the most genuinely frightening films of the twenty-first century, particularly during those scenes where Kipps is alone in the old house. Certainly, some of the devices Watkins uses are clichés of the genre, such as the creepy music and that huge black crow which mysteriously appears inside the building, yet they are remarkably effective in creating an atmosphere of terror. Even I, who am normally sceptical about the existence of ghosts, was persuaded to suspend my scepticism.
The film's best-known name is Daniel Radcliffe as Kipps. As in "My Boy Jack" he does enough to suggest that he has a good chance of making a name for himself in the post-Potter world, even though, short of stature, slight of build and bespectacled, he does not have the normal looks of a matinée idol. (These characteristics, however, have not prevented him from acquiring a considerable female following).
The ending, which is not the one that Hill wrote in her novel, will perhaps strike some as too sentimental. "The Woman in Black" is, nevertheless, a most impressive film. It is only Watkins' second film; I have not seen his first, "Eden Lake", but on this evidence he appears to be a director to watch for the future. 8/10 A goof. While searching the house, Kipps finds a birthday card sent to Nathaniel on his first birthday. The card shows a picture of an Edwardian motor car. It is clear, however, from the dates on his tombstone that Nathaniel was born in the early 1880s, before cars were invented.