“Don’t go chasing shadows,” someone warns Arthur Kipps (Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe) in The Woman in Black, a haunted house chiller that follows all the rules even though its troubled, heedless hero does not.
Earlier, Kipps’ employer sternly reminds him, “This is not a charity. This is a law firm,” before sending the young attorney off to a remote village to settle the affairs of a scorned mother who hanged herself. Of course, Kipps ignores the behest and becomes involved, busying himself with placating a shadowy ghoul that plagues the small, turn-of-the-century town.
Kipps, a widower, leaves behind his cherubic son (Misha Handley, Radcliffe’s godson), who begs him not go. Upon arrival, the village folk beg him to leave. Children eyeball him in the streets. The hotel is mysteriously booked. What’s worse, it takes a costly bribe to convince a coachman to traverse the winding road to the foggy, overgrown manor, which becomes an inescapable island when the muddy tide rises. All foreboding signs point to a spooky result and, for a while, this gothic ghost story delivers.
The atmosphere is appropriately spine-tingling for the third film released under the recently revived, old-school genre banner Hammer Films. (Their first feature in 34 years was Let Me In.) Creepy children and rotting ghouls will certainly raise your heart rate. Unfortunately, the second and third acts are peppered with cheap “boo!” scares and intercuts to lifeless dolls, without much in the way of escalation or character development. Instead, promising director James Watkins slows the pace with too many hesitant sneaks down the same dark hall.
Radcliffe is adequate in a role that requires him to be mostly alone and frightened on screen, though his piercing blue irises don’t do him any favors. His eyes stand out in the darkness and naturally become the focus of ours, only Radcliffe’s peepers are not particularly expressive, or even mildly terrified, as ghosts emerge from shadows and dead children return to haunt him.
Mr. Daily (Ciarán Hinds), the gentleman quoted at the top of this review, warns Kipps about chasing them, then reluctantly lends a hand. Hinds is affecting as Daily talks about his own lost boy and how the grief drove his other loved one (Oscar nominee Janet McTeer) to madness. Demon-possessed, knife-wielding, chihuahua-doting insanity.
By its dissatisfying conclusion, The Woman in Black has proven once again that Radcliffe can face malevolent forces, but this spooky post-Potter movie relies on jump scares and a mixed bag of horror tropes to keep audiences following a rather familiar haunting.
