The Woman in Black (Daniel Radcliffe)

Written by Jonathan Jacobs

Be honest with yourselves folks, you would not give a rat's patootie about The Woman in Black were Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe not the featured star. Traditional ghost stories do not play well off-season (Halloween being their primetime). Moreover, The Woman in Black does not offer scares like Insidious does or murder and mayhem in the bloody vein of Saw; instead we are treated to a 1960s style English ghost story in a remote pastoral town that has been stultified and countrified by ghost paranoia. Let's be clear, The Woman in Black is a drawn out sound effects laden movie about an evil spirit that haunts a bucolic British town in the early 1900s. Enter Daniel Radcliffe and we've got the whole world curious.

Fresh off his Broadway play "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying", Radcliffe has accepted the role of a lawyer (Arthur Kipps) in the midst of some drastic life changes. Arthur's wife Stella (Sophie Stuckey) died and left him with a young son to care for. All the while, his career in jurisprudence is disintegrating as his performance is waning. To salvage his reputation and to remain with his firm, Arthur is tasked with traveling to a remote rural town to sort through a deceased woman's documents. His bosses want him to determine if any papers or monies are unaccounted for. Arthur is not by nature a superstitious man but what he encounters is harrowing (well, sort of).

Onboard the train to his destination, Arthur encounters a kindly but conflicted elderly man (Roger Allam as Mr. Bentley). Mr. Bentley is the only man in town wealthy enough to afford an automobile. He lives a lonely life with his wife who is convinced a specter haunts their town and causes horrible tragedies to occur. Mrs. Bentley believes that he child died on account of this wicked witch. The superstitious believe that every time she appears another child is found dead. Mr. Bentley remains unconvinced and pities his wife for her suffering.

Arthur encounters resistance among the town's people. He is housed in the attic where three young women inexplicably took their own lives by jumping out. His business ultimately takes him, against the will of the town's folk, to the outlying mansion in the marshlands where he must sort through hundreds of documents. The road is often flooded and impassable which makes his journey to and fro quote perilous. Only Mr. Bentley is willing to chauffeur him to his destination.

Once inside the mansion Arthur is quickly spooked. Loud noises are conjured, dolls move on their own, the floor creaks, there are whispers, and he sees the shadows of the dead. He exhausts the complement of candles and lanterns but the house remains dreary and dim. Progressively, the haunting becomes more severe. He suspects the woman in black (a ghost) continues to hang herself because of her grief over losing a child to drowning (which she blames her neglectful ex-husband for). Arthur must nevertheless press forward or he will lose his good standing forever in the legal field.

The majority of the scares offered by Director James Watkins are more auditory than they are visual. At first they are slightly spooky but his repetition of the same trick quickly grows tiresome. Moreover, Radcliffe is still Harry Potter at heart. He cannot seem to break free from those chains just yet, but believe me, we all wish we were so burdened! This is a step forward for the young star but it is more of a homework assignment than a final test. Frankly, I have no idea whether or not Radcliffe will turn out to be a successful actor. Despite his shortcomings (height being one of them), the boy who lives is now the boy who acted and did so with passion and professionalism. He is capable of anything, but just what are those things going to be? Your guess is as good as mine. The Woman in Black is boring and redundant and not a little bit silly, but hey, that's not why we all watched the movie is it?