These are the sort of windows faces look in.

Rating: 5/10 (25 February 2012)

'The Woman In Black' is a tribute to the Victorian revival of Gothic-style ghost stories. Thus it concentrates on atmosphere and melodrama. Susan Hill's plot from her novel has been altered for the film to give Kipps (Radcliffe) a back story that creates more audience sympathy toward him. A movie that relies on atmosphere to build up the scares, it falls back on the clichéd 'scared villagers' and 'abandoned house' when it should have concentrated on tighter direction and better camera work. All the scares are of the 'boo, made you jump' variety. Nothing gets under the skin or lodges in the mind to unsettle or disturb the audience, which is strange given that the ghost preys on children and could have been played for those angles. Performances are uneven. Radcliffe doesn't have to do much apart from looking depressed and scared, his character is never fleshed out but that is the fault of the script rather than Radcliffe's acting. Mrs. Daily (Janet McTeer), is unintentionally comic when she's channelling spirits. I found myself actually starting to giggle when she was carving pictures into the table whilst in a trance. Overall, the film is like bread made without enough yeast, it fails to rise or fill out. The relentless use of obvious CGI for the ghosts starts to irritate as well. See if you can spot the blooper where Kipps and Daily (Ciaran Hinds) are shown driving along a modern day tarmac road.