Atmospheric and moody Victorian ghost story offers plenty of shivers...

Rating: 7/10 (8 February 2012)

You have to be in the mood for a good, authentically creepy ghost story to fully enjoy the quiet chills of THE WOMAN IN BLACK. It's only after the story ended that I realized I'd been taken by something I should have seen from the beginning. At any rate, the ending did come as a twist for me--but in view of all the preceding events, it was indeed foreshadowed by information given about the title character.
Daniel Radcliffe has to carry the weight of most of the film on his own shoulders and he does a very satisfying job as a young lawyer whose firm sends him on a mission to a remote village accessible only when the tide is low enough to permit horse and carriage to enter. The story depends on the musty atmosphere of a decaying mansion full of shopworn dolls in a nursery where three girls met their fate years ago.
Radcliffe's only friendly neighbor is Ciaran Hinds, who helps him get to the root of the troubled village and the death of numerous young children. The extremes to which Radcliffe is willing to go (as in the marsh scene where he recovers a dead boy's body) are improbable, to say the least, but so graphically enacted that you have to believe it. It's one of the most suspenseful moments in the story. Radcliffe is willing to recover the corpse to give it a proper burial next to the mother, whose spirit is evidently haunting the old mansion.
The surprise ending fits the story but came as quite a shock to me, although with hindsight I can see that there was some preparation for it if you paid close attention to the script.
For lovers of Gothic tales full of mist, suspicion, brooding townspeople and dangerous marshlands, THE WOMAN IN BLACK is your ticket. Good production values are in abundant evidence. Hammer is certainly making a good comeback in the horror genre with this delicious ghost story. Fine cinematography is another big asset.
Radcliffe makes expressive use of his penetrating blue eyes framed by bushy brows that confirm his qualification for more adult roles in his future.