Get a shave, Potter, you remind me of your mother!

Rating: 9/10 (14 March 2012)

I am assuming that the majority of you reading this are below the age of forty; if I am right, then I want you to tell your parents and grandparents to go and see this film and be prepared to be scared in a proper way, not just startled, but really unnerved in the way that you were by "Dead of Night" in 1945 and by "The Haunting" in 1963. This is my type of horror movie: no blood and snot shocker, just a well-paced thriller based on the conventions of such films, i.e. DO go upstairs when you hear creepy noises, DO go into the dark room where you know something terrible is waiting and DO NOT lock doors to keep the bad thing out (or else, lock ALL doors through which you may need to escape yourself). I had never realised how creepy musical boxes are; I now realise that clowns are far scarier than I had realised and folks who live in remote villages definitely are not good for visitors. If you changed the location of the film to Transylvania, this would be the absolute epitome of the Hammer films I paid my two bob to see in my teen years (half-a-crown in the balcony),from the suspicious locals to the sets so well built that they look like real locations. As for young Harry Potter as Arthur Kipps, I found him quite stiff and lacking in variety of emotional expression, but I hope he soon finds a role which will give him a chance to show a wider range. I only hope he has a shave next time.By the way, I have never watched a Harry Potter film, so Daniel Radcliffe came to me as a pretty unknown quantity.