The Woman in Black

Rating: 7/10 (9 July 2015)

Old school Gothic period chiller, adequately atmospheric, with a genuinely melancholy, tragic, and sufficiently morbid and spooky story, enhanced by the traditionally melodramatic score has a grief-stricken widow (Daniel Radcliffe) sent to the "Eel Marsh House" to "settle documents" for her estate,running into locals who want him to leave immediately. Something about the place, and how children continue to die, leaving plenty of sad parents and curiously cold townsfolk who treat Radcliffe as an unwelcome outsider. Radcliffe was told by his boss at the law firm (a rather cold- hearted sort who realizes his employee lost a wife yet warns him of being successful or else in his duties at the Marsh house) to go through all documents/paperwork before coming back, making sure everything's in order. What Radcliffe can't anticipate is a child-killing ghoul dubbed "the woman in black". Few are at all kind to him except a grieving man named Arthur (Ciaran Hinds) who lost his son to drowning and has a wife who believes the boy speaks through her. The townsfolk, a "superstitious bunch" (as Arthur considers them), make Radcliffe's life a bit difficult, feeling he's responsible for any further harm that might befall their township. The Marsh house is a dynamo of art design, with the wallpaper, banisters, doors, furniture, portraits, candelabras, fireplace, windows, and architectural decadence providing the appropriate backdrop for eerie goings-on. The outer design of the house is given a decaying elegance while the inside has enough dispersed lanterns and candlelight to embellish the aging furnishings that give the house its bleak ambiance. There's plenty of the woman's presence in various shots like facial appearances in windows (even a real good one right next to Radcliffe as he looks out a window at the willowy courtyard below), off-distance throughout the house, and in faint glimpses, all done to convey that she's around, not quite dead. The score could be tiresome to those who aren't fond of aural cues meant to make you jump or jar you out of your complacency. Ending is both haunting and beautiful at the same time...the woman in black is driven and rarely fails in her mission to live up to her reputation. Toys, a rocking chair, haggard writing on a wall, the ghosts of dead children in the woods near the house, a cemetery deep in those woods, and even the sight of a hanging ever so briefly: lots of items and visual images to emulate how the woman in black has and continues to make her presence felt. A particularly shocking scene has a girl set herself on fire at the urging of the woman in black: it is one simple motivation for her, and that is to take the children from those that took her boy. The film's chief terrifying scenario has Radcliffe's son arriving to meet him with the nanny by film's end. The usual trappings--the "marsh", fog, candles only for proper visibility, and the old, dark house--are all accounted for. If you look for these, you're in luck. If you don't...avoid. As most of these movies go: the ghoul could be satisfied if the protagonist can uncover what she so desires. In this film's case: finding the woman in black's son, bringing him to her, and perhaps giving him a "proper burial." As to be expected, this film has impeccable lighting and photographic work to add to the gothica.