The Woman that had Potential

Rating: 5/10 (5 February 2012)

** out of (****)
After the abysmal trainwreck that was "The Devil Inside", I was looking for a decent roller coaster ride of chills and thrills. The hoopla for this movie certainly rose to such gargantuan heights, and a good chunk of top critics took a liking to this, so what went wrong? Everything.
"Black" revolves around a young lawyer, who travels to a remote village where he discovers the vengeful ghost of a scorned woman is terrorizing the locals.
Being an avid horror fan, especially of the supernatural sub-genre (if you will), this movie basically shot up my adrenaline from the first shot of the trailer 'til the last. I was more than ready for this movie. So automatically, I am disqualified from the "hater bias" bullcrap you IMDb'ers like to toss around when us average Joe's get disappointed by a film, that we were actually rooting for from the start.
Well, first off, this film is just not scary. The first half of the film is conducive to cheap and generic jump scares, that just fall flat on their faces. Oh look it's some murky liquid leaking from a dirty faucet! Oh look it's just a bird! It was just all very cheap. From the first half, it is just tedious to endure. We don't establish a sufficient enough amount of character development and we really don't go in-depth with the premise. It is just a very stale first hour or so that's chock-full of filler, so as to consume most of its running time. Just lots of blabber about the town and tons of GOTCHA! moments that don't fully run their course.
Then we get to the second half which is a notch better from the first, but still don't bring us anywhere. Here we get even more jump scares, some which prove to be effective and others which are just tedious time-wasters. Here's a lesson to future filmmakers: You can use the cheap thrill tactic maybe about three times at the most. If you abuse your power, you're just downgrading your film and everything else just becomes that much more uninspired. But let's steer clear from my rant of jump scares. The story. From the trailer, the premise sounds bone-chilling and simple enough, right? The film overcomplicates everything and raises too many questions that are left too open-ended. And atop of that, the pacing is just way too slow. The whole film is just a slow-burn effect that amounts to absolutely nothing. And that ending? Oh boy, this movie is just a mess.
Well, there are a few good things I can say for "The Woman in Black". For one, the production crew did their homework. A lot of attention to detail is payed when organizing their pops and set designs. This is one of the most visually exciting horror films I've seen. And also, the performances are very strong. Daniel Radcliffe ditches his whole Potter affair and does something very worthwhile here.
All in all, "The Woman in Black" is such a huge disappointment. The scares go nowhere and are recycled, the pacing is just too slow and tedious that it's almost a chore to sit through, and the premise is even less than compelling. It's quite a shame considering it looked like a refreshing and nostalgic horror film that could've started '12 on a high note. Unfortunately, any potential it had was wasted. Well, I guess you can say it isn't terrible and actually raises a peak of interest here and there, but that doesn't amount to much when you're paying a hefty price for it.