The ghost of Harry Potter

Rating: 6/10 (22 February 2012)

Susan Hill's Henry Jamesian ghost story gets a bigger make-over than the stage version. The premise is more or less the same: young solicitor's clerk arrives in deserted house to sort out papers of deceased owner. Cue spooky goings on involving a dead child and its dead but restless mother.
An audience weaned on the SAW series and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY was never going to settle for mild disturbances in the manner of The Turn of the Screw, so after a few scenes of frightened villagers lifted from any Hammer horror you care to mention we soon start to see dead people. A serious flaw in the direction allows the audience to glimpse ghostly reflections and manifestations in a rocking chair before Arthur does and before the CGI is cranked into overdrive. Helped by local landowner (Ciaran Hinds - with a full-on mad-with-grief wife who almost belongs in a Carry-on), Arthur thinks he knows how to placate the Woman in Black. But does he? ... Cue (loud) threatening music.
The 'ghost' that really hangs over this movie is Harry Potter; the wiz-kid is going to take longer to get past than an incarnation of James Bond. Daniel Radcliffe tries hard to climb this mountain but he is not yet (will he ever be?) an actor of substance and here, as in the HP series, the special effects overwhelm the cast. There are a few make-you-jump moments in THE WOMAN IN BLACK and the marshy setting is a pleasing throwback to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, but this movie will not enjoy the shelf-life of Jack Clayton's THE INNOCENTS or Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING, two early Sixties spine-tinglers that are still tingly 50 years later.