Too old . . .

Rating: Null/10 (2 February 2012)

I can't get excited about the film version of Woman in Black any more than I could the hoary stage play now second only to Mousetrap for West End longevity. The haunted house conceit with all its creeks, cracks, and cranky toys is too old itself to creep me out. That the film revives the old Hammer film company is the best revision of all.
Arthur (Daniel Radcliffe), a young 19th century attorney, is given a last chance with the firm by going to an old Victorian mansion at the end of a vulnerable causeway to settle the estate. Leaving behind his motherless boy, Joseph (Misha Handley), an early part of the abandoned-child ghost motif to come, Arthur and we endure the loud bangs in the house when each door opens, the fuzzy ghost of the mother who long ago lost her child at the mansion, and a thousand other bumps in the night to make even the rude mechanical restlessly sitting next to me say, "This is getting dumber by the minute." It's not always dumb if you sense in the adaptation of Susan Hill's classic novel a theme expressed best by James Joyce as the "melancholy unity between the living and the dead."
The film pivots on the attempt of parents to connect with long gone or lost children, who return in either vision or reality, depending on your opinion of the occult. In that way the film is saved from being a repetitive vehicle for scary-movie tropes. I even found a visual reference in the long hall of sconces to Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. Thank goodness for cinema history in needy places.
Kave Quinn's production design, right down to the folk art toys, is noteworthy as is Tim Maurice-Jones's cinematography, be it bird's-eye shots of the mansion or dimly-lit corridors. In a better horror story, both artists would be better feted.
If you are anything of a realist, you'll probably chuckle at the ending, a lame attempt to reflect Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's belief in spiritualism. Like the film before it, the ending is less creepy than it is comical. Part of that comes from Daniel Radcliffe's less than smooth delivery and the laughable horror elements that will grace this genre forever.
Join the dead in one happy party hosted by Hammer Films.