Dark Gothic film which may give you the creeps

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2012)

The Woman in Black. A dark Gothic tale which uses every creepy trick in the genre and finishes in a plethora of loose ends! The filming, where you can see it, is good. A lot of the atmosphere is generated by the music and loud bangs will make you jump. There are few characters who appear to be sane and the story line takes spite and hatred into infinity. If you know England, the Yorkshire village is filmed near the Essex marshes, which perhaps only have the east coast in common. The village and its people are like in the comedy series "The league of Gentlemen". Not much in the film is understated or left the the imagination. it perhaps would have been creepier if it had been. The ending is a bit predictable, fatalistic and expected. The most disturbing aspect of the film, from my point of view, is that superstition, ignorance, spite and hatred are the dominating themes. It wouldn't appeal to a tidy mind. The bereaved hero, Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) has gone to a Gothic house ( which looks like Satis House in Rochester, Kent) to sort out the estate. The mess of papers is never sorted out. The house never gets on the market. Disturbed minds are never sorted out. Wherever there might appear to be normality is an undercurrent of extreme insanity. I really liked the vintage car and the vintage railway scenes, although I am reliably informed that the locomotive used dates from the 1930s not the 1910s. I once stayed in a Yorkshire Inn, which had that kind of atmosphere. I decided to go into the small communal lounge upstairs where there were a lot of stuffed animals around the room, the rain beat against the window panes and the wind howled around the eaves. I put the television on and the film Damon Omen started. I heard an uneven rhythmic tramp on the wooden staircase which led to corridor outside the room I was in. The door opened with a creak. My heart was racing by this time. There stood the black- bearded landlord and it was his wooden leg I had heard on the stairs. We both jumped in surprise to see each other. I decided the warmth of the open fire in the flag-stoned bar and a draught Theakston's Old Peculiar with my friends was preferable to watching Damon Omen on my own that night. I was reminded of that incident when I watched The Woman in Black.