Running Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: James Watkins
Quick Impressions:
This would be a great movie for a slumber party! Early on, there are plenty of long, silent stretches perfect for silly jokes and fits of giggling. (And the jokes would come naturally for any Harry Potter fans as Daniel Radcliffe again and again walks up a winding staircase past walls lined with creepy oil paintings.) Eventually, though, The Woman in Black does get undeniably frightening and potentially shriek inducing. Possibly thanks to cuts specifically made to get it a PG-13 rating, there’s no gore and not much blood. This is good, old-fashioned gothic horror. I really couldn’t watch it without envisioning a group of ten-to-fourteen-year-old girls giggling wildly, gasping, and sometimes screaming. (Probably just one would be screaming as the others made fun of her.) Adults should like it, too. True, the beginning is slow, and the ending is troubling. Still, there’s plenty of scary good fun to be had.
The Good:
This movie gets an A+ for atmosphere. The Woman in Black takes its time setting up the story. In fact, much more time seems to be devoted to the set-up than to the payoff. As is usual for the genre, this film gives us the impression that anyone who visits England and dares to set foot outside of London will inevitably run into a creepy village where the residents mysteriously shun outsiders because they’re hiding an eerie secret which in the end will doom them all. It’s rather like An American Werewolf in London or, for that matter, the original Wolf Man in that respect. Daniel Radcliffe’s London solicitor Arthur Kipps is our window into this strange, misty netherworld where you’re more likely to see a ghost than to see anybody’s children outside playing in the yard. The villagers are a xenophobic lot to be sure. (Racking my brains, trying to think of the word xenophobic, I asked my mother, “What do you call people who keep to themselves and shun strangers?” She replied, “Some might call them prudent.” That is probably the case here, though why on earth they don’t just explain the situation to Arthur up front, I will never know.)
If you like fog, old-fashioned door knobs, dimly lit hallways, massive wooden staircases, paintings of no one in particular, yippy dogs in sailor suits, family graveyards full of ghosts, unintentionally creepy Victorian windup toys, and glassy-eyed children staring through windows, then The Woman in Black is the movie for you.
The characters—once we finally meet some—are also arrestingly captivating. Initially, Dailey (played with delightful gravitas by Ciarán Hinds) seems like the only sane person in the village. By the end, of course, he seems like the craziest one. And though she doesn’t get too many scenes, his tormented wife (played by Janet McTeer) certainly makes a lasting impression. They’re by far the most interesting people in town, basically because they’re the only ones who actually give Kipps the time of day. The innkeeper and his wife seem incredibly interesting at first, too, particularly Mrs. Fisher, played by Mary Stockley. Presumably, she is the mother of the three girls in the opening scene (who also give great performances) since she takes pity on the soaking wet Kipps and offers him their abandoned playroom for the night. I wish we got to see more of Mrs. Fisher. Stockley really does give a captivating performance.
The atmosphere in the film is just marvelous. When Kipps visits the widow’s estate on the marsh, those of us longing to see a good, old-fashioned haunted house have got to feel incredibly satisfied. My husband whispered to me, “That looks like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.” Indeed it does. (It also looks kind of like Hogwarts, but just put that out of your mind.)
Also, though it takes a long time to get started and tries to warm us up with shocks that make you jump, the movie does provide some genuine scares and—best of all, that rarely utilized element in horror—a coherent plot.
Visually:
This movie is all about shadows in reflective surfaces. If you’re Kipps, you don’t ever have to worry about whether something evil is lurking behind you—it always is. Just put your mind at ease, right now, Kipps. If there’s any kind of mirror or pane of glass in the room, then you can be sure you’re not the only one in there. The whole movie is fun to look at. The set design is to die for. (Insert hokey cackle here.)
Funniest Moment:
The movie is not intentionally funny, but if you’re in a perverse sort of mood, there’s plenty of gallows humor to be found. I love the scene when Mrs. Fisher shows Kipps to his room. It’s so over-the-top creepy and darkly hilarious at the same time. She obviously takes genuine pity on his plight, but what she has to offer him doesn’t really seem all that nice. (“But darling, we can’t leave him out in the driving rain. Perhaps he could sleep in the haunted suicide chamber? It will just be for one night,” no matter how long he intends to stay.)
Best Action Sequence:
When Kipps gets the idea to use the power of Dailey’s car to appease the ghost, I thought of the Lindow Man at the British Museum and all the other great stuff there. What was happening on screen was exciting, too.
Best Scene:
I love the scene between Kipps and Mrs. Dailey in front of the tomb. Janet McTeer and Daniel Radcliffe have a great, fairly intense scene, and what she scratches at the end we’ve been waiting for the entire movie.
What happened to the dog?
That’s less a section header than a question. I lost track of him, I guess. He barked. Kipps opened the door. He ran out. Then where did he go? Was he there the next day? I guess I need to watch the movie again. I kept wondering if he got killed in a scene that was cut. But maybe he did come back in the end, and I just didn’t notice him.
Does Daniel Radcliffe seem distractingly like Harry Potter?
No, although Kipps seems a bit like Teddy Daniels from Shutter Island. At the beginning of the movie, you’re not quite convinced that he’s of entirely sound mind. Radcliffe gives a strong, perfectly respectable performance as a grieving widower and distant father forced to act despite his grief when threatened with the loss of his job. The staircase at the haunted house reminded me of Harry Potter far more than Radcliffe ever did.
The Negatives:
Several questions kept coming into my mind and refusing to leave. Why on earth didn’t the people in town just tell Kipps the truth (or at least some more believable version of the truth), or why didn’t the attorney in town produce a fake will?
What on the earth was Kipps doing at the house? I know the boss at his firm told him to go through the widow’s papers, but presumably they wanted to find her will. He was just crawling all over the house looking for every single stray scrap of paper he could find. And then did he read the papers? No. He read like five papers and then went prowling around through the family plot. Forget not being able to get done in a few hours! By that method, he’d be going through papers so long, he’d miss his son’s wedding.
And how could Dailey be in such serious denial? And why didn’t the people in town just move? I have three words for them—blindfolds, kerosene, matches.
Also, I didn’t like the ending. For one thing, I don’t think the wishes of Nathaniel Drablow were respected or even taken into account. For another—I don’t know. I just didn’t like the ending.
Overall:
The Woman in Black is a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half, and a perfect movie for tween slumber parties. It does offer some legitimate thrills, and it boasts fantastic atmosphere and captivating performances. It’s not the scariest movie ever, but it’s certainly better than most movies released the first week of February.