After The Woman In Black I think we can safely stop working in Harry Potter references every time Daniel Radcliffe’s name is mentioned. You have to admire how far he’s come as an actor and all the really interesting projects he’s taken on over the last few years. The one thing this move shows is he does have star power, but even that power is not enough to save this kludgy, dreary mess of a movie.
It’s a Ghost movie with the most mundane ghosts you can imagine and apparently Director James Watkins thought his movie must have been dull as well because every time a Ghost appeared (usually only for a few seconds) we get this obnoxious, loud gong, thung sound. It screams “Hey! I’m a ghost, jump!” It happened every ten minutes and started to give me a headache. Shocking people awake is not scary.
Radcliffe is Arthur Kipps an estate lawyer who is sent to put one of their departed client’s affairs in order. He’s sent to put the affairs of one of their departed clients in order. There’s something about the woman of the house being tormented by her husband and her child being missing – presumed dead and that’s why she’s an angry ghost. Why she’s seeking revenge on the town never made much sense, she just blamed everyone for the death of her son.
The Woman in Black wants to be a “higher class” ghost story so it’s set in an earlier period of London’s history to give the film’s look a certain “gravitas,” but everything just looks old, dark, and wet. Why is it popular these days for every director to shoot London as constantly dark, gloomy and raining? I’m sure there must be some sunny days in London? The few times I was there the weather was nice. Watkins seemed more concerned about creating a spooky, forbidding atmosphere than actually telling a coherent story.
This movie is all about Radcliffe and whether he can carry a movie, post Potter, on his own and I think as a star vehicle at times he does. A large chunk of this movie is Radcliffe just walking through an old haunted mansion by himself, looking at papers and saying nothing in 20 minute stretches (and the movie is only 90 Mins), punctuated by that annoying sound. It’s meant to make you jump, instead it woke me out of the stupor the movie was putting me in.
There were a few points in this movie where I was tempted to walk out but Radcliffe’s presence was enough to make me at least hope that this was all going somewhere. But it really doesn’t and the ending was one of the most disappointing endings I’ve seen in a film in awhile. I won’t spoil it, but I’m wondering if people will leave the theater like I did wondering if there was a “subtext” to the meaning behind the ending? Was it a reward or revenge?
At 90 minutes this movie felt like 2 hours, I did not care about this movie enough to actively hate it and it delivered about what I expected it to. I just wish there was more to it than a lame Horror movie with no horrors, dressed up as a “Art House” film.
Final Grade C-