REVIEW - THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Lets be honest, if Daniel Radcliffe’s name weren’t attached to The Woman in Black no one would have given it a second thought.

In the flick, the young Mr. Radcliff stars as a lawyer/widower who travels to a remote village, stumbles onto a hidden secret, and comes face to face with vengeful ghost praying on the offspring of the locals.

This story has been told a million times. It’s been told a million and ten times.

Maybe even a million and twenty.

Sure, the actors are different, the characters have been tweaked just a smidge, but there’s really nothing new going on here. Radcliff does a decent enough job in the lead, I suppose, even if he is woefully miscast. I’m sorry, but when I look at Harry Potter, a widowed lawyer just doesn’t come to mind. It’s not his fault. The dude has a serious baby face.

The kid can grow a patchy beard all he wants; he’s not fooling anyone.

It’s not all bad though. Instead of going for over-the-top action and buckets of gore, The Woman in Black moves at a deliberately slower pace. The scares are mostly tension-based, and at the very least, I can respect that. The film is atmospheric and dense, and the things you don’t see are given the same sort of care as the things you do. That’s good. I liked that. It appeals to the part of me that loves old Hitchcock films and the moody horror-stuff that existed before the slasher genre came rolling in. If I ever meet the director I’m going to give him a pat on the back, lift my open palm into the air and motion for him to slap me five.

Then I’m going to ask for at least half of my rental money back.

Unfortunately, as fantastic as all of that is, none of it makes up for the mostly sloppy and universally forgettable story.  Even if I haven’t seen something like The Woman in Black in a while, I’ve certainly seen it before and I’ve seen it done a hell of a lot better. Strapping the boy who lived into period garb and throwing him in the mud doesn’t automatically make a poor script watchable.   

While The Woman in Black might be worth checking out, once will be more than enough. This is blip on the landscape of Radcliff’s career. While it sort of proves that he’s capable of becoming something other than Harry Potter on the big screen, it isn’t the role in which he actually pulls it off.

It’s back to the stairs for you, kiddo. 

-STEVEN