Hammer is back!

Rating: 10/10 (23 March 2012)

The first British horror film to bear the "Hammer" banner in 35 years doesn't disappoint.
It's a masterpiece, but not by exploiting sentimental, schlocky nostalgia or by trading on a once great name in the hope of appealing to rusted-on fans of the original Hammer Films. This is a trend-setter in it's own right.
Radcliffe pleasantly surprises. I assumed he'd be typecast as the perennial schoolboy from the Potter films before witnessing his unexpected ease and charisma in this production. So believable as an anxious father - effectively relating the primal fears of any parent - I had to google his age to assure myself he wasn't older than I'd thought!
He makes it, but a classy supporting cast adds lustre. The child actors deserve acclaim for their unsettling stillness; accented by their pallid makeup and costumes.
And as for the setting itself, a formula as old as time comes across as fresh as paint! But there's nothing fresh about this eyesaw - a once grand house at the end of a snaking causeway and periodically cut off by tides and sea mists, the stately but decrepit pile offers a widescreen, HD wonderland of dark nooks and crannies, dusty drapes and brocade dressing screens. Production designer Kave Quinn has gone to town with the creepy Victoriana, and whoever was in charge of props deserves kudos for the marvellous selection of eerie toys alone --cymbal-clanging monkeys, leprous dolls, a sinister zoetrope -- that populate the abandoned nursery.
As Radcliffe's character Kipps settles in for several nights of terror, despite warnings from the believably terrified local villagers, the shocks are duly delivered with a perfect sense of horror timing, accompanied by huge jolts of discordant noise.
All the Hitchcock tricks are dusted off and polished to perfection.
The special effects are more than adequate, but they aren't nearly as impressive as the perfect sense of horror timing and the truly unsettling blend of shadows and light. I approached the whole film with an air of cynicism, solely because those hoary old chestnuts - haunted houses and all the stock characters that we find within and around them - have been done a thousand times over, and often badly. Had they been one fraction out, what was a highly effective unsettling viewing experience could have descended into laughable schlock. They weren't, and it didn't.
Only shot-by-shot analysis can reveal whether there really are figures and faces lurking, barely seen, at the edge of the frame, which contribute very subtly to the atmosphere of unease... or are just figments of the imagination? The more obviously visible spectres, meanwhile, including the titular Woman in Black owe a particular debt to recent Asian horror movies, (especially Hideo Nakata's "Ringu,") in the unsettling, fast-gliding way they move and appear.
It's a film to be viewed on the big screen, and more than once to be fully appreciated. Full stars!