A Pale Ghost

Rating: 6/10 (26 November 2012)

I don't think there is any medium now that this remarkable work by Susan Hill has not covered. The first version I saw was the very good 1989 TV film starring Adrian Rawlins. Since then, I have seen the excellent, genuinely scary stage play in London and read the book.
Now we have a film version, with Daniel Radcliffe venturing outside the world of Harry Potter to play Arthur Kipps, a young, widowed lawyer sent to the wilds of rural England by his employer to break up the estate of Mrs Drablow, a recently deceased client.
She, of course, lived in a spooky old house out on an isolated island. And it is here that two quite long, eerily effective passages take place as our hero sees the titular character and experiences various other weird phenomena while alone in the house.
Meanwhile, all is not well on the mainland either, with children dying right and left and Kipps given a distinctly chilly reception.
The problem with material like this is that, in our materialistic, rational, cynical age, to many it will seem rather silly. When I first saw it, I really wasn't sure what to make of it, in part because the very last scene succumbs to the film industry's eternal weakness – maudlin sentimentality.
The acting, however, is mostly good. Daniel Radcliffe isn't bad at all, though his performance is so restrained that at times I wanted to shout at him to wake up.
Atmosphere is well created and handled, supported by agreeably creepy music that is never overdone. The locations work too and the camera work is great.
But, despite all this, the overall effect is oddly pallid. It was definitely worth trying and nobody is really at fault, but the stage version is still the one that works best for me.
Rating: 6/10.