Written by Jane Goldman
Based on the novel by Susan Hill
Directed by James Watkins
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Janet McTeer and Liz White
UK/USA/Sweden/Canada, 2012
It’s always nice to see a Hammer film during Horrorfest and this year I’m taking a look at one of the flick’s from Hammer’s recent revival, THE WOMAN IN BLACK. It fits nicely right alongside all the classics, and does haunted houses better than Guillermo Del Toro’s attempt from a few years later, CRIMSON PEAK.
This one stars Daniel Radcliffe as a widowed father who’s short on cash and in the doghouse at his law firm in turn-of-the-century London. He’s dispatched to the remote estate of its recently deceased owner to collect any documents that might figure in a last will and testament. We know we’re off to a good start in Hammer-land when he arrives at the local pub/inn only to get a super cold shoulder from the locals, who emphatically try to prevent him from completing his task. Classic.
Turns out, the estate’s haunted, and it’s up to this lawyer to figure out what’s going on and put the haunting to rest before his 4-year-old son and nanny show up, because it seems this particular haunting manifests itself iin a Woman in Black who causes village children to become hypnotized into causing their own deaths.
I liked how Radcliffe teams up with the only local who will give him the time of day (Ciaran Hinds) and takes charge in trying to figure everything out as the clock keeps ticking. The movie moves swiftly to a bittersweet and perhaps inevitable ending that had me on the edge of my seat.
I haven’t heard either great things or bad ones about this unassuming and already semi-forgotten little flick, but I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
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