"The Woman in Black" - 2012

The Woman in Black is a well-crafted Victorian horror tale from Hammer Studios that confidently sets the appropriate throwback mood and lets the ghosts take it from there. It's also a movie particularly suited to Daniel Radcliffe's "I've-got-the-weight-of-the-world-on-my-shoulders" persona.

Radcliffe's character, Arthur Kipps, has been in a state of perpetual mourning since his wife died giving birth to the couple's son four years earlier. His sour puss has begun to weigh on his colleagues at the London law firm where he works and his boss gives him one last chance to snap out of it and deliver for the company or they're going to send him and his wet blanket packing. He's assigned to travel to a remote village to scour the home of a recently deceased widow for any and all personal documents that may have some bearing on the dispensation of the woman's estate.

The village itself is predictably Victorian-horror in its demeanor with lots of plain folk uttering ominous warnings and nary a sunbeam nor smile to be found. Kipps is eventually taken to the widow's house which sits atop an outcropping in the middle of an enormous swamp. The house is large and foreboding enough to be the summer home of Norman Bates' mom and inside is stuffed to the gills with mementos of happier days gone by now moldering under the weight of loss and regret.

Kipps finds it hard to concentrate on his assigned task given that the house seems to be hosting a lost soul jamboree and soon finds himself chasing shadows, walking nervously down dark hallways and staring out the windows at a woman dressed in black who seems to be casing the joint.

After his first day at the house he returns to town only to have a young girl die in his arms. He discovers that nearly everyone in town has lost a child in some horrible manner and that the town folk blame it on the lady in black and by extension on Kipps for waking her from her slumber with his presence in the house. The rest of the film slowly reveals who this mysterious woman is/was and exactly what her beef is with the world.

Director James Watkins certainly doesn't subscribe to the less-is-more school of horror. Indeed there's a ghost in every window and a restless spirit in every shadow. Still it all manages to work and there were a few instances during the film when I actually felt the proverbial chill run down my spine. I can't remember the last time I experienced that sensation in a movie theater. Nearly every note hit by the creative team is strong and clear with locations, art direction, sets, costumes, cast and effects all working seamlessly to transport us not only to another time and place story-wise but movie-wise as well. This is an old-fashioned haunted house movie that makes no apologies.

Watkins seems to have known just what kind of property he was working with in Daniel Radcliffe and how to utilize his talents for maximum effect. Radcliffe himself doesn't exactly have to stretch himself here but he does a fine job inhabiting his character and making us forget about that kid with the wand. (One of my complaints about the latter dozen or so HP movies was the fact that Radcliffe never was given a chance to lighten up. Here that heaviosity works like gargoyles on a Gothic cathedral.)

The ending was unexpected but can be said to have a certain poetic air to it that, after a few minutes of reflection, I came to accept and appreciate.