Not as scary as you've been lead to believe.

Rating: 4/10 (10 August 2014)

The state of horror films these days is quite poor, as nowadays horror films are less about build-up, good characters and true scares and rather hateful teenagers, jump scares and poor plotting. Would this film, with it's healthy budget, acclaimed source material and the newly reformed Hammer backing it, break this mold? Unfortunately no, as despite positive critic reviews and great box office, this film is quite poor with poor production and nothing vaguely scary.
The plot is that a young lawyer called Arthur Kipps has a new assignment: to try to sell a house that has been abandoned for some time. The problem is that the village around the house starts acting strangely when he arrives and the house is haunted by a ghost who curses those who enter with a terrible fate. While the plot does sound creepy initially and there are occasional moments in the film that take advantage of this (mainly the brilliant opening scene), these moments are few and far between, and there isn't much interesting material in between these moments that make the film worth watching.
One of the reasons for this is the lack of any originality in the film's setting. I understand that both the film and the book that it was based on is meant to be told in a manner similar to a traditional Gothic tale, and I can respect that. The problem is that it sticks too close to these roots and because of this offers nothing new to this genre. This is highlighted with how the aforementioned haunted house is literally an amalgamation of every haunted house cliché in existence. You have the chairs rocking on their own, family pictures with the eyes scratched out, very dark rooms, a graveyard containing the villain's coffin, the list goes on and on. It honestly feels very derivative, and it ruins any atmosphere that the film wanted to make.
Other reasons for this are in the screenplay itself. Outside of the haunted house clichés, there are many other problems. One of these are the major plot holes which undermine the story's serious tone, with the main ones being why no-one is leaving this town if it is cursed by a ghost who kills their children and how Arthur doesn't depart also, despite how everyone is acting weirdly towards him and acting like they've got something to hide, similarly to how the people of Summerisle act towards Police Sergeant Neil Howie in the original Wicker Man. However there it made sense why Howie didn't leave: he was a police officer on a murder investigation, however Kipps is a lawyer trying to sell a house. Not very comparable is it?
It also isn't very scary, as the title villain isn't in the movie much , and even when she is, her moments of glory are very brief to the point that if you blink, you'll miss it. For most of the time, exposition tells you about her and what she can do, which isn't very scary at all. I understand that what you don't see is scarier , but in order to make her somewhat threatening, show us what see can do, don't keep telling us, as after a while, it gets pretty boring as you're essentially being lectured about the monster rather than being terrified by it. It is honestly one step away from reading the bleeding book.
It isn't enough to say that this is build up either, as good horror films may not show much of the monster through a lot of the running time, but they gave you enough to reward your patience but still keep you curious, and at least showed you the monsters by the end in their full glory, whereas this film doesn't even give you that luxury. At least in Alien and Cloverfield, the monsters at least had an original and interesting design, which made you feel rewarded for your pateince. This film's villain on the other hand is a woman in a black wedding veil. Fail. All of this reduces any menace that the villain has. Considering that it's victims are mainly children, that is quite an astonishing feat.
All of these script problems are surprising, considering how great a writer Jane Goldman is as shown by films like X-Men First Class and Kick-Ass. It does show a lack of experience for her, which is excusable considering that this is her first horror film. This inexperience is shared by director James Watkins, which is far less excusable considering that he has worked in the horror genre (director of Eden Lake, writer of The Descent Part 2) before. Sure, he gets good performances from his actors but the film is poorly directed, from the lack of menace from the villain, the fact that the kills get less and less scary as the film goes on, poor atmosphere and the fact that many scenes are very poorly lit (I know the film has black in the title, but this is just ridiculous). Sure, it's not as bad as Monsters, where vital scenes are shot in pitch blackness, but it does recall Spinal Tap, as you ask yourself: "How much more black could this be?" And the answer is none. It is honestly a horror film so shoddily made that it makes the low budget horror film Creep look like a professional job by comparison.
Overall, this is just a badly made & badly written horror film. Sure it isn't as poisonously bad as The Village and Paranormal Activity, but it is still pretty poor and gives the British film industry a bad name. If this is one of the newly reformed Hammer Studio's tent-poles, then they have clearly lost their way from their much better 50's-70's days of horror.