Harry Potter Staring at Things - a Ghost Train Ride

Rating: 2/10 (8 November 2019)

(2 out of 10 stars; spoilers only after the ***)
This movie is a gripping tale about loss and grief. A young, widowed parent is learning how to deal with losing a loved one and experiences terrifying events along the way. With a truly unnerving atmosphere, great actors, striking contrast cinematography and spot-on direction, this one has easily earned its place in the top 5 horror movies of the last decade, if not of all times. Jennifer Kent's directorial debut...
...wait, we are talking about The Babadook, aren't we? Oh, The Woman in Black, OK, here we go:
Watching this movie can be best compared to riding the ghost train at your local fair: You know, they will bombard you with loads of jump scares, loud sudden noises and scary faces. You can see the scares coming from miles away, even before the bend. Still, you flinch and jerk a couple of times. However, in the end you are actually rather bored, because there is no menacing atmosphere or anything that really gets under your skin. After all, you know from the get-go that you will never be in real danger. When it's over, you are rather relieved and soon you go on to never think or speak of it again.
Throw in a gothic look, acting as wooden as Pinocchio, uninspired direction, bad continuity and every sucked-out horror cliché you can find out there and you get: The Woman in Black, taa-daa!
It is simply astonishing, how truly uninspired a "horror" film this is (though, I tend to rather call it a mystery flick, as nothing truly terrifying ever happens and there is no gore). Want to go through the horror-text-book-checklist?
Grieving main character dealing with loss. Remote village with hostile inhabitants who refuse to interact with our hero except for ushering vague warnings. Even more remote haunted house that is temporarily completely cut off from the outside world. Dark, gothic look. Big deserted creep-house with baroque interior like paintings and chandeliers, covered in cobwebs. Creaking floorboards. Objects that suddenly move without outside interference (doors, even a freaking rocking chair, spare me not!).Haunting ghost presence, which cannot be at peace until reunited with its loved one. Strange noises, coming from whichever room our main character is not in. Stupid character always moving exactly toward that noise. Darks shadows and/or ghosts suddenly appearing or just standing in the distance which are suddenly gone when the camera cuts to them for the next time. Children who move as if remotely controlled, with empty eyes and slow, zombie-like movements. Old letters and newspaper articles, some scribbled with mad comments IN RED. Spooky children's toys and dolls with dead eyes, children's voices and songs. Impenetrable fog and heavy rain appearing out of the blue whenever handy for the movie's scare tactics. YOU NAME IT, IT IS ALL THERE (and more)!!!!
Nevertheless, none it this is scary as the director and script utterly fail to provide some kind of meaningful atmosphere or a story or characters to make you care.
***spoilers ahead***
Here comes, as always, a non-exhaustive list of the movie's faults and stupidities:
1. Probably the main issue with this movie: We know, at the latest after the second appearance of the WiB, that Harry Potter himself is not, and will not be, in danger, as the WiB targets only children. Hence, watching him stumble around from jump scare to jump scare loses even more of its tension - disregarding the lame execution which makes it boring to begin with - as you know that nothing is going to go down (on him at least).
2. The WiB keeps on appearing and scaring Harry Potter, but this never goes anywhere.
3. The only thing to go anywhere is actually Harry Potter himself. In the main and most agonizingly drawn-out scene which takes up at least a third of the film, he spends the night at creep-mansion. Slowly but surely things start to get freaky and ghosts start to pop up somewhere in Harry's field of vision but far away, either outside when he is in the house, inside, when he is out, in a room upstairs when he is in the main hall... you get the idea. And what does Harry do each single time? Frown a little and then start to walk towards the noise or apparition, but slooooowwlyyy step by step, so the camera has ample opportunity to pan back and forth and in and out to build up tension and then make us jump at the final scare. Each time accompanied by a loud bang of music or noise. He does that five or six times (instead of trying to get the hell outta there or at least doing something about the ghosts), the scene literally takes half an hour, until morning and his friendly saviour arrive to take him back to the village.
4. Only, where is the dog they introduced so prominently at the beginning of the scene? Just vanished.
5. I am going to have to say it: Daniel Radcliffe cannot act for the life of him!! He wears the same dull and slightly startled, stoic look on his face for the entire movie. You can't say whether he is angry, scared, tired, happy or just bored.
6. If the WiB hates all the town folk's kids so much, why not just finish all of them off right away? No, of course she has to take them slowly, one by one.
7. So, WiB's evil force is to have kids commit suicide. This logically means that the girl in the basement set the fire herself. While half the house already burnt down and everyone ran outside, she is still in the basement, unharmed. She only torches herself with the oil lamp in the very last second, when Harry Potter is there to watch it. Nope, not buying it.
8. Of course, the solution - which we all saw coming from miles away 15 minutes into the movie - is to reunite the WiB with her dead son who was so wrongfully taken from her. After this has been finally done, it turns out, this actually does not pacify the evil ghost and she still goes on to kill, not only Harry Potter's son, but also our hero himself. So they can finally both be reunited with their dead mum and wife. All good, evil ghost even twists a little smile (you're welcome, Harry), end credits roll. Does this mean that the solution to all this grief is just to botch yourself, so you can finally be at peace? Why did WiB kill all those kids, if she cannot be reconciled by delivering her dead son?
9. The WiB's sons body is still intact, after being sunken in the swamp covered by the thickest mud for years, while his mom has already rot to a skeleton in her casket.
10. Not a single parent in the world would actually let their kid's hand go, while standing on a platform when a train is approaching. Of course, Harry Potter, after witnessing several children suicides, and being well aware that WiB was after his son until moments ago, DOES JUST THAT.
11. The ONLY TWIST in the movie, I did not see coming, was that the friendly neighbour with the car is actually indeed the only decent human being in the film and DOES NOT turn on or betray our hero.