The Woman in Black
Tags: suspenseful, gothic, murder, violence, horror, haunting, flashback, atmospheric, revenge

Plot synopsis:
Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is a young lawyer who is depressed by the loss of his beautiful wife after giving birth to a son. His son, now grown to a toddler, draws pictures of him with a sad face. He is assigned to prepare a large house for sale on a marsh and travels to an obscure village where he is shunned by most of the townspeople. He visits the Eel Marsh House, the estate of the late Alice Drabow, to look it over, but finds his job has grown more perilous as it is haunted by the ghost of a woman scorned. He learns from the villagers that the ghost of the woman in black seeks revenge against their children because her child was taken away from her. Kipps is befriended by Sam (Ciaran Hinds) and his wife Elizabeth (Janet McTeer). They, too, have lost a son, and they help the lawyer to investigate the background of the estate and what happened.------
written by KristelClaireThree pretty little girls, all dressed in what looks like nursery dresses, are playing in the nursery room on their own, with porcelain dolls. Suddenly, they stare to each other, and then, they look to the front wall. There is nobody there, and the day is clear. Without uttering any word, they stand up, hold their hands and go to the window wall. They open the three-tiered windowpane, and they jump on their own accord. There is a moment of silence. Suddenly, a female scream is heard - presumably of the person who has discovered the dead bodies of the three little girls.Cut to Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a young agent. His boss, Mr ... , tells him on rude terms that this is his last opportunity, as this realty company is not a charity: if he makes another mistake, it will be his last, he won't be given another opportunity.Arthur says good-bye to his 7-year-old son, Joseph (Misha Handley). This is a serious boy, who will be left alone by Arthur's work commitment. The nurse (Jessica Raine) will take care of him meanwhile. Joseph has drawn himself, his father, and his mother in the form of an angel atop a cloud in a piece of paper entitled "tuesday - no capital here". His father asks Joseph why he is so sad, and Joseph says that he just is.Arthur travels by train. He talks to a fellow passenger, and afterwards, stares at a little girl (Indira Ainger) who is also travelling with them. Arthur reminiscences about when his son was born. The boy was perfectly alright, as the nurse pronounces (Lucy May Barker) proudly "it's a boy" but the doctor (Andy Robb), tells him straightaway that he is so sorry, that nothing could have been done for her. Immediately, Arthur sees how a blood-stained sheet is used to cover the horrified face of his late wife, Stella Kipps (Sophie Stuckey).The fellow passenger, Mr Bentley (Roger Allam) advises to take a cab. He also invites him to dine with him and his wife the following day.The town is dark, and everybody looks terrified, sullen. Parents tell their children to get inside when they look to the visitor.At the local inn, Kipps is put into the attic - the place which the three little girls jumped from at the beginning of the film-. Mr Fisher (Shaun Dooley) looks like a rude uncompromising host. Mr Bentley will recommend him to leave town as soon as possible, but Mr Kipps tells him that he will need to stay up until Friday the least to make and serious and fair evaluation of all the items within the house.A cab driver takes Kipps to the mansion. There is a thin causeway linking the town to the lonely isolated mansion which zig-zags among the marshes. The driver leaves him right outside the plot of land which is occupied by the mansion and its land. When Arthur tells him to pick him up at 3 o'clock, he says that it'll have to be at five, because of the tide.Arthur enters the property. There seems to be nobody at the home, so he gets up to the second floor. He takes a look at Joseph's drawing before setting to work in front of a pile of papers. Inside one of the bedrooms, he sees a nest of ravens. A raven rushes out flying, so it startles him. Arthur thinks he's heard something, so he looks out of the window. A black shadow appears on the garden, among the dangling tombstones. The raven flies around and softly lands on the bed. When Arthur looks out again, there is nobody in the cemetery. Arthur rushes out. The thick fog prevents him from seeing anything, or anyone for that matter. The feeling of something terrible about to happen is omminous... but it's only the driver, who has just arrived to pick Arthur up. He tells him to be careful. Arthur thought that he had heard the faraway cries of children, and the driver tells him that some boys died drowned in the marshes.Arthur runs to the police station in order to denounce the person who has trespassed the property. The constable Collins (David Burke) says that there is no villager who would go to that mansion on their own accord. The constable gets inside to look at something. At that moment, two children arrive with a very sick child, Victoria Hardy (Alexia Osborne), who is spitting blood. Arthur screams, but he can't do anything for the child. Victoria dies in his arms.Back to his lodgings, Arthur thinks he hears the soft cries of a woman, so he calls out for Mrs Fisher (Mary Stockley), but it's a pet raven which mimicks the whimpering voice of a woman. Mrs Fisher serves him a drink.At the dinner, the conversation is a little awkward, but everything seems to go well, until Elisabeth Fisher has a fit and has to be sedated. In a later conversation, the husband says that there are many superstitions in the town, but that everything is an illusion. Later that night, Arthur sees Elisabeth caressing one of her dogs, caressing and soothing it in an all-white laced craddle.Arthur goes looking for Mr Jerome (Tim McMullan), but what he finds is a terrified girl imprisoned in a room (Cathy Sara), who tells Arthur to let her alone because he has killed Victoria. The villagers cry for another lost girl, but Bentley disregards their pain as superstition. Bentley drives Arthur around in his motorcar, and this is the second that the images focus on a cross planted at a side of the watery path. Bentley takes Arthur to the house, and offers to pick him up at 11, but Arthur prefers to spend the night there. Bentley lends him his dog.There, Arthur lights some candles. One of the rooms can't be unlocked with any of the keys, so Arthur turns his attention to a heavy wooden box with Nathaniel Drablow written on it.Arthur makes a daguerotype go round, and he sees for a split second, the dark eyes of the woman in black. Scribbled photographs: a shadow passes by, and the dog begins to bark. Arthur follows the dog, who barks close to the tombstone of Nathaniel Drablow (Ashley Foster). When they go back to the mansion, Arthur sees the Woman in Black (Liz White), retreating from close to the window. When Arthur goes to that room, he looks out and sees the dilapidated view. Right on his back, the Woman in Black appears and immediately disappears. He doesn't see her, but he feels something so he looks around. In a wooden box, he finds cards addressed to Nathaniel from his birth mother, The Woman in Black, signing as "MUMMY". That woman was Jennet, who had a tombstone alongside Nathaniel's. Through the documents, it looks like Jennet gave her child on adoption (as she was deemed mentally unfit to raise her child). It is also revealed that Nathaniel is adopted by Jannet's sister Alice who keeps this as a secret and raises Nathaniel as her own son. Through many letters, Arthur comes to know that Jannet was very displeased as she wasn't allowed to visit her son. After the accident that took the life of Nathaniel, his body was never found in the marshlands.Jannet appears as a hidden figure in the photos of the Drablows (Alisa Khazanova), with Nathaniel as the child in the photographs.Arthur falls asleep, and the shadow of the Woman in Black gets close, but the dog barks and scares it. Arthur wakes up and walks along the dark corridor up to the locked room. He remembers the locked room when his wife died. He tries to open this door, but can't. He goes down to look for something to open it, but suddenly, it is wide open. He picks an axe and a candle. A rocking chair is moving on its own, and for a second, the audience can see The Woman in Black rocking herself.Under the wallpaper, observed by the mechanic toys, he discloses ...YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM... written in blood. Going back to a window, he can see clearly the shrillingly screaming face of Jennet. Outside, in the rainy night, he can see the images of many dead children, rotten and anguished. Running back to the mansion, he can see the black footprints of the Woman in Black, and he follows them to the room. He sees Jennet hanging herself.Leaving the room, he sees the Woman in Black approaching from the other end of the corridor. Arthur encloses himself in a room, but Nathaniel grows from the bed. When he tries to leave the house, he finds Bentley who has arrived to pick him up.Back to the town, Arthur sees Jerome's house on fire. He gets into the house and inside, he can see how a girl, Lucy Jerome (Aoife Doherty) sets herself on fire, pronted by the Woman in Black, who is present there encouraging her without words. Arthur can't do anything to save her.Bentley offers some consolation to Arthur. Elizabeth tells Arthur about Jennet in front of her tombstone. The children can speak through her, and they say that the Woman in Black was always present to make all those children kill themselves one way or another as her own child was lost too. Bentley arrives when Elizabeth has another fit while repeating "SHE IS COMING" over and over again. Before passing out, Elisabeth draws a picture of Arthur with his son beside a train engine (Arthur recognizes himself from the earlier pictures made by his son).Arthur convinces Bentley to help him find the body of Nathaniel and reunite him to his mother by giving him a proper burial. He ties himself with a rope to Bentley's car. Arthur goes in the black slimey goo of the marshlands. Finally, Bentley pulls Arthur out, and he takes out what seems a hidden wagon, and within it, the body of Nathaniel.Arthur enshrouds Nathaniel's body. Then he puts the postcards sent to him by his mother and other mechanical toys around the dead body as he waits for The Woman in Black.Bentley sees his dead son entering a room. When he follows his son and enters the room, he is imprisoned and Arthur can't hear him. The corridor gets even more darkened. The Woman in Black shouts to and scares Arthur, but suddenly she disappears. The other door also opens, setting Bentley free.They bury Nathaniel and Jennet's body together.In the next scene it seems that the Woman in Black still can't forgive.Some days afterwards, the two friends receive Joseph with his nurse at the train station. The nurse goes to pay for tickets back to London as Arthur and Bentley talk.Joseph releases his hand and jumps to the track while a train is approaching.Arthur sees the Woman in Black and then his eyes dart to his son walking on the track. Arthur jumps to the trackline to save Joseph but the train runs over. Bentley can see all the dead children and the screaming Woman in Black at the other side of the track, through the gaps of the moving wagons.Arthur is holding Joseph in an empty train station.Stella welcomes them both and they tenderly walk on together along the track.

Review: The suspense was ratcheted to the limit.While I'm still not past Daniel Radcliffe's voice, I still hear Harry or Daniel, his face and body language were spot on, and greatly added to the tension of the movie.In the end, it is what it is, a suspenseful horror movie that gets the job done.
When he arrives he finds that the memory of Drablow, and her remote house of Eel Marsh, holds the village in a grip of fear, particularly those who have children.....It's fitting that that bastion of British horror, Hammer Studios, should be behind this delightful period ghost story.
Quite often the better ghost story films are better because they operate on a what you don't see is what scares you more level, Watkins has managed to keep that aspect of his film whilst also giving us enough of the truly terrifying spirit to jolt us in our seats; often showing her to us and not to Radcliffe's Kipps!
But it's with the interior of the house where the makers excel, an utterly unforgiving and upsetting place, brilliantly under lit by Tim Maurice-Jones for maximum scary effect.On the acting front the film rests solely on the shoulders of Radcliffe, and he comes up trumps.
Hopefully the word will get out that this really is only a film for those who love a good boo jump ghost story of old, that's its target audience, and that's the people whose reviews you should trust.
At first glance, The Woman in Black appears to be yet another of these "ghost films," where cheap scares, predictable plot "twists," and horrible acting drag the viewer down into an hour-and-a-half maelstrom of mediocrity that can only end at the appearance of "Directed by..." According to most of the reviewers thus far, The Woman in Black was a letdown.
Radcliffe is also a worthy focal point of the film, keeping most of the fear and anticipation unspoken throughout.I would not nominate this film for any kind of award, but it achieves what I believe should be the ultimate goal of all "horror" movies: to draw us in so close that when our fear manifests itself on-screen, it is already too late to turn away.
In a day and age where a scary movie is about "how much blood and squirt out of a body and how far can it go", it is refreshing to see this good old fashioned romp around a haunted house.Things jump out at the right moments, the imagery is creepy and disturbing.
It's a moody, psychologically scarring throwback to the old Roger Corman movies based on Edgar Allan Poe stories, with an amazing adult performance by Daniel Radcliffe as a young lawyer out of his depth.
Understanding that these are all staples of the great horror movies of yore doesn't mean that this film is stealing; it is merely authentically replicating the desolate atmosphere, in which a whisper can signal death.I entered the theater knowing very little of the movie's content.
So what I'm saying is, if you're looking for a fun night to be creeped out in an old fashioned horror film sort of way, go see the Woman In Black, you will not be disappointed..
Swapping the lingering, life-spanning impact of Hill's Dickensian book of the dead for a hollow yet effective house-of-horrors yarn that'll have you stirring in your seat- and out of it.The film's set-up is more or less identical to the book but with a few baffling tweaks; Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is a solicitor and widowed father of one who's summoned to a remote town and manor on an eerie northern marshland where he's to settle the estate and will of a recently deceased old hag.
A child falls whenever it is seen; a woman in black.If there's one thing horror movies have taught us, it's that ghostly old dears and kids are a recipe for new underwear.
The film charts Kipps' probe into the strange happenings from inside the damned estate in this simplistic yet effectual horror gem that's as playful and frightening as it is enjoyable.As a stand-alone picture, director James (Eden Lake) Watkins' Woman in Black is as sound a horror of this ilk and purpose come; the haunted-house caper has been done to death then done again over the course of cinema's history.
If Radcliffe is looking to break free from his Potter persona, it's going to take a lot more than a 12A, British horror film to do the trick.
"The Woman in Black" is a dramatic horror film by Hammer with a good ghost story developed at a slow pace.
Daniel Radcliffe's first film role after the end of Harry Potter is playing a lawyer in the early 1900s.
I mean he's 22, I know they had kids early back then but come on, but like I said, maybe it's just because I'm so used to him being Harry Potter.The Woman in Black is the best horror film of 2012 so far, granted the only other one I saw was the Devil Inside, but I did enjoy this film, and recommend you check it out..
The Woman in Black (1:35, PG-13) — fantasy: supernatural, 3rd string, formulaThe Woman in Black is a standard haunted-house story (bereaved mother seeking vengeance for her dead child from beyond the grave), in this case with almost no dialog, just poor Daniel Radcliffe (as pre-WW1 solicitor Arthur Kipps) walking around said house looking grim.During the course of the movie Radcliffe displays between about 0 and 2 days worth of Nixonian 5 o'clock shadow, not monotonically increasing, as one would expect, but rather coming and going to the point where I was spending more time watching that than paying attention to the plot.
A nice non-existent twist when local burgher and ostensible skeptic Samuel Daily (Ciarán Hinds) DOESN'T turn out to be some kind of secretly malevolent deceiver but is instead genuinely friendly and helpful.Opposed to this are the dreariness, almost complete absence of any cast or dialog, over-familiar premise, and my standard lament about all such movies, namely that they may tell us WHY the evil spirit is doing the wicked deeds, but they never show us HOW.It's a sad commentary on the film when you find yourself thinking "OK, if you want to kill off all the kids in the village, just do it and be done with it!", but such is the impatience engendered by the petulant, dithering deader that I was hoping she'd finally get it over with so I could click my stopwatch off and bail out of the theater.All of this combines to barely put The Woman in Black into the "up to you" range if you like this kind of thing..
Harry Potter does a great job in his first break out role but the story just comes up short with minimal scares and a crawling pace.
Initially I was worried Daniel Radcliffe would portray Arthur Kipps in a very similar way to Harry Potter, but I soon found that he actually has far better acting skills than I realised and I was left in awe.
The original idea was not bad at the beginning as they had the right ingredients for a good movie but they messed everything up and ended with this terrible movie and terrible acting performance that annoys you trying to scare you with cheap tricks.
This movie doesn't deliver anything new and reminds me off Sleepy Hollow but without been funny or scary or anything positive.I began looking at my watch after being 30 minutes into the film.
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.
There's nothing to dislike about this new version of Susan Hill's classic ghost story, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, except that it's been filmed before (in the 1980s) and, inevitably, the earlier one was better.
The characters look and feel right, from the reliable Ciaran Hinds to, yes, Daniel Radcliffe as the youthful hero (I'm no fan of Radcliffe in the Potter films, but having seen MY BOY JACK I'm convinced of his talents).The horror aspects of the story are where this new production falls down a little.
The scares may be predictable, but in all other respects THE WOMAN IN BLACK is a film that pays affectionate homage to both its source material and the kind of glorious ghost stories of old..
I expect good horror movies to have a lot of subtle things apart from the scary scenes that stay with you after watching the movie like the 3:00am from Emily Rose or those faces in the exorcist that would pop up for a second.
Woman in Black did a really good job at keeping the tone of the book all the way through the film, and I do think that is the most important thing in a book to movie adaptation.
If your looking for an old fashioned scary horror film; which is hard to find nowadays may I add, watch WOMAN IN BLACK!.
Because of the excellent job she did with Kick-Ass, I'd forgiven screenwriter Jane Goldman for the absolute drivel that was Stardust, but The Woman in Black has just put her in my bad books again, a more predictable, pedestrian, derivative and utterly boring ghost story it would be hard to envisage.
Likewise, director James Watkins, who impressed me so with his superb debut Eden lake, hasn't exactly gone up in my estimations.For those who grew up with Radcliffe as Harry Potter—a demographic most likely still fairly unfamiliar with the horror genre—this might succeed in coming across as both original and scary, but trust me when I say that everything in The Woman In Black has been done many times before, and often much better.
When i saw the trailer I was truly hoping for a eerie classic horror movie where you really felt scared without the use of cheap scares and in your face randomness (birds scene, need i say more?).
Unfortunately, the shortcut here was a story that offers little substance.Daniel Radcliffe (yes, Harry Potter himself) plays a young, widowed solicitor named Arthur Kipps, who is still grief stricken, and now on the verge of losing his job.
It's not giving away anything to say that every time Radcliffe sees this mysterious woman in black, something bad happens in the village.The annoying thing about the film is that whenever we get a chill-inducing moment like a shadow in the background or a figure passing by a mirror, it is immediately followed up by a cheap parlor trick involving a sonic blast of music and an ear-piercing scream.
It's as if the director (James Watkins) is convinced movie goers are too ignorant to know when to be scared, so he provides clues to say "Scream now!" Ciaran Hinds and Janet McTeer add a touch of class to the film as Mr.and Mrs. Daily, who recently lost their son.
My theory that no film featuring Mr. Hinds can be all bad is tested here, and Ms. McTeer was seen recently as the best thing about the Albert Nobbs film.On a positive note, this is a nice transition movie for Daniel Radcliffe.
It's a racket that works like a charm, and isn't going away until the audience does.The Woman in Black stars 'Arry Potter 'imself — Daniel Radcliffe — as Arthur Kipps, an adolescent English estate lawyer bound unluckily for a haunted house in the boondocks.
I was so excited to see this movie, as the trailers looked genuinely creepy, the set design looked spot-on, and I was intrigued by Daniel Radcliffe playing anyone but Harry.
I thought The Woman in Black would be the film that revamped the classic era, the era of straight up creepy ghost stories/haunted house thrillers.
Personally I was expecting more cerebral atmospheric horror than the choreographed staccato JUMP tactics, but it was very much the latter and they were relentless.It just felt more like I was watching one of the those attractions at Disney Land, than an actual movie; 70% of the running time is comprised of Radcliff walking from one ridiculously cobwebbed, creepy doll-littered room to the next while the viewer waits nervously for a piercing violin chord and a scary face to jolt them out of their seats.Radcliff is actually pretty decent for all that he had to do (basically stay wide eyed and tense).
I was just taken to see this as a birthday present, and I must say that, although Radcliffe does some very good work in it, and the new ending they came up with was fresh and interesting (if a bit twisted), I really felt disappointed that the stage play, which I saw several years ago in an EXCELLENT local production in Los Angees, was so much better.
'The Woman In Black' genuinely is a really good film, it's had a lot of publicity but for all the wrong reasons.It is Daniel Radcliffe's first film since the Harry Potter series ended and his performance is good, he doesn't stray too far away from Potter but there are interesting aspects of his character in this.
I can't tell by Radcliffe's performance in this film alone if he will successfully distance himself from Harry Potter and be seen as a serious actor from here on.
And of course, some moron decided to do a remake of The Woman In Black, the original being in my book one of the scariest horror-films I have ever seen, genuinely chilling.
"The Woman in Black" by James "Eden Lake" Watkins is an adaptation of best selling Susan Hill's novel written in 1983.Daniel Radcliffe plays young attorney Arthur Kipps and single father whose wife died three years ago during the birth of his son Joseph.He is ordered to travel to the remote Northern English village of Crythin Gifford to tend to the affairs of the recently deceased mansion owner.The decrepit mansion Eel Marsh House is situated on remote island and is filled with creepy looking dolls and toys.A rocking chair is moving on its own and mysterious woman dressed in black tends to appear suddenly.James Watkins remake is not as eerie as Herbert Wise's 1989 adaptation,but it surely has dedicated cast and vastly atmospheric Gothic setting.There are some effective chills and the imagery is occasionally disturbing.The color palette is gloomy and there is only a tiny bit of blood.In fact there is no comparison between "The Woman in Black" and incredibly savage "Eden Lake".A solid 8 out of 10..
-- www.Ramascreen.com --THE WOMAN IN BLACK is a mildly entertaining horror film that rides heavily on the popularity of Daniel Radcliff.
The film has all the elements needed to tell an effective horror story, a creepy empty mansion, a vengeful, murderous spirit, a protagonist conflicted, and I think director James Watkins did a splendid job of maintaining the unpleasant, uncomfortable tone.
Performance-wise, I think he plays Arthur Kipps with a certain composure, he knows his character is conflicted, part of him just wants to get the job done and return to his son, but part of him wants to believe in the supernatural because he misses his dead wife, which probably lead Goldman to writing an ending that gives you a reunion as the ghost's way of saying thanks.
Before you write raving review for a movie, you should probably look at the film as a whole and not just give it a 10 because Daniel Radcliffe is in it.
*******MAY INCLUDE SPOILERS*******Daniel Radcliffe gave an excellent performance in nothing more than a clichéd horror movie.
However, in my book, its biggest fault is that it is simply without many new ideas, if follows the horror genre recipe to the tee and becomes rather predictable.The focus, the center, the star and the reason for the movie is Daniel Radcliffe and unfortunately, there is not much more.
James Watkins delivers a slow burning chiller which allows the tragic character of widower Kipp time to breathe.Based on Susan Hill's novel The Woman in Black's excellent writer Jane Goldman includes the old horror clichés in the screenplay but injects realism along side.
I do think it's over - rated but if u enjoy going back to square 1 when they were 1st making horrors ( creepy noises, creaking, shadows etc) and like films set in the 20th century, then go watch it.
it's been a long time since i have watched a horror movie covering my eyes of chills.
In short all the elements of your classic Ghost story were present and after "That" scene (which was frankly heart-stopping) and with images of "That" face and "Those" eyes, plenty of uneasy nights followed with more than necessary rooms constantly lit around my house.Needless to say I readily purchased a copy of the Book and was delighted to see that essentially the film had stayed true to the book albeit with a slightly different ending (although the same sentiment)and the odd cosmetic character change here and there.Fast-forward 3 years to 2012, and this latest production supported by that stalwart of British Horror, Hammer and with an adapted screenplay by Jane Goldman.
Daniel Radcliffe playing as the main character Arthur Kipps was a well developed character and showed great faces of fear and other emotions to analyse to you watching how he is feeling and also adds towards the extreme intensity of the film.
The Woman in Black is a creepy horror film that relies on story, not scares.
If you're expecting a modern horror film, with lots of cheap scares and easily disposable people, that's not the case here.
This is a slow-paced, classic horror film that manages to scare simply because of it's atmosphere.
The whole movie has the look of a good old fashion horror flick.