The Woman In Black

Genre: Horror, Thriller
Released: 2012

Rating:  

Wouldn’t it be cool to see a movie where a character is told to stay away from a creepy house and actually listens to that advice? Sure, the movie would end after fifteen minutes but it would be something different. “The Woman in Black” has decent cheap scares throughout but resorts to extreme amounts of annoying jump scares to the point where the plot line gets put on the back burner. The movie essentially loses itself in it’s own cheap scares. When I walked out of the film, I asked numerous critics if they followed the plot and as we tried to piece together the story line, we were all confused. What we all could agree on was the film had great cinematography and created a creepy feeling but lacked any type of substance. If I want to be scared the way I was in this film, I’d just ask a friend to walk up behind me and clap really loud.

Daniel Radcliffe essentially phoned in this performance. He barely speaks throughout the entire film and when he does speak, nothing important comes out of his mouth. The majority of the film is his character walking around a “haunted” house and loud noises occurring that make the audience jump. It is these loud noises, as Brick from “Anchorman” would call them, that cover up poor dialogue and plot structure. I’m not going to lie though, during the intense sequences I did find myself on the edge of my seat, except for the montage of jump scares that occurred during the beginning of the fill.

Radcliffe phoned his performance because he barely spoke any dialogue you say? Yes and there’s a major difference between what he did and what Ryan Gosling and Andy Serkis did in their 2011 films. Ryan Gosling’s character in “Drive” said little dialogue because his character was built around that structure. We emotionally invest in him because of his facial expressions and physical actions. The environment around him supports that type of character. The same went for Andy Serkis as Caeser in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” He said little to no words yet emotionally connected to the audience so well. Radcliffe just didn’t have the chops or the script to play a character who said very little. We as the audience lose ourselves in the scares and there’s not enough character development to keep the film afloat.

Another thing that really bothered me is that his character didn’t look old enough to have a four year old son. Talk about being taken out of a film and losing your suspension of disbelief! That was a huge issue for me. I will give Radcliffe credit for actually leaving the Harry Potter character behind. I did find myself involved in the film enough where I forgot that he was Harry Potter and was able to focus my attention away from that. I was worried that the entire time I was watching “The Woman In Black” that I would be thinking of Voldermort and magic wands.

The film opens and we meet Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), a young lawyer who is sent to a creepy remote village to handle a deceased woman’s legal issues. Everyone in the village is telling him to stay away from her house and just leave town. Shocker, he decides to investigate and comes to find out that the woman is now a ghost who is terrorizing the village. He decides to finish his “work” and take matters in to his own hands. Again, he should have gone to the house once and just went home, which would have made more sense and ended the film about an hour earlier.

I just feel like it’s cheating when you use the types of scares this film uses. There’s no real build up. Yes, the environment created is very creepy and the cinematographer and set designers did a create job of creating that. i found myself feeling anxiety during some of these sequences but it felt like every thirty seconds they resorted to some type of jump scare with a loud noise and creepy face. The pacing felt off and the movie frankly became a little bit boring.

It’s weird because I did find myself jumping out of my seat a couple of times. Though, it was completely manipulative. It wasn’t that that the director had some sick talent to move me as an audience member. He got me with cheap scares, which for me at least, means the film is not worth seeing in a theatre. I recommend a rental for this film. I don’t think it’s a bad film but I feel it’s a bland film with bland performances and bland substance.