Life after Harry

Rating: Null/10 (24 May 2012)

Different people see this movie as different things. I see it first and foremost as Daniel Radcliffe's life after Harry Potter. Emma Watson has shown her post-Potter debut in "My week with Marilyn", in a small but eye-catching role. So- far-so-good for her. But how about Radcliffe? Well, to the movie first.
The setting is not unlike "Sleepy Hollow" when someone in an investigating capacity has been thrown into the uncomfortable position of visiting an isolated community to be met with local hostility. Here, Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a lawyer in the post-Victorian period getting this assignment as his last opportunity to prove himself before getting fired. He desperately needs his job to support his 4-year-old son, after losing his wife in childbirth.
The job involves looking up whatever documents, and there are reportedly tons of them stacked away in a creepy mansion, pertaining to the suicide of a mentally disturbed woman, in the said mansion. The co-star, if I nay call it so, the haunted house, is accessible only through a narrow strip of roadway just above the coastal waters, which reminds me of Key West. But then, during high tide, the roadway is underwater, turning the place into a completely isolated island, such as what you find in Agatha Christie's classic story about ten guilty parties just beyond the reach of law being lured to an island to receive their deserved punishment (I was going to quote the very original title of the novel but it's so politically incorrect that if I do so, this piece will surely be deleted as a result of abuse reports).
One thing the audience will be dying to find out, right from the beginning of any movie of this horror-suspense genre, is whether it is really something supernatural or, rather, a logical explanation exists. While this spoiler I am certainly not going to disclose, I will go so far as to say that the plot is quite simple, about someone who has lost a child seeking revenge, in kind, indiscriminately.
This movie is well made, and you see the word "atmospheric" in just about every review. The horror is by far more mental than visual. People who are well versed in making this sort of movie well know that the most scary moments are not when the horror appears, but just before, with something lurking around the corner, behind the door, and such. The haunted house is well designed and skilfully filmed.
Rounding up on Radcliffe, I would give him a lot of credit for playing a well-focused protagonist, giving some dimensions to a character that could have otherwise been rather flat (here's your 3D). He looks a bit young though for the part, maybe partly due to our long identification with him as Harry Potter. His is not easy work, shaking that firmly ingrained image, but he has made some headway. There is still a lot of hard work ahead but let's hope that there are good scripts coming his way to help him get there. In the supporting role are Ciaran Hinds and Janet McTeer, playing a couple that is the only people befriending Kipps in this hostile territory. They have some acting to do, quite easy work though for actors of their calibre. There rest of the cast is merely props.