The Woman in Black

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Janet McTeer, Ciaran Hinds

Directed by: James Watkins

Rating: I Didn't Like It

Maybe I'm just jaded as of late, but I don't seem to find what I'm looking for in movies anymore.  I've seen two movies in theaters over the last couple weeks, and neither have been very good.  I've decided to give you a double dose of review this week.  You'll find a review of The Grey posted tomorrow.  I wanted to get both reviewed while they're still fairly new.  However, neither gets very good remarks.  

I was more interested in seeing this movie to see Radcliffe in something other than a Potter film than I was in the premise.  It's your standard creepy house, ghostly figure, shocking moment, PG-13 horror flick.  It wasn't a bad movie, but I just didn't think it was anything special.  

The Good: 

• I think Radcliffe is more than capable and has more than enough talent to overcome the type-casting with which many young actors reprising one role repeatedly get stuck - see Mark Hamil for example.  It's tough for the audience to see them as anyone other than that first role, because it was so immortalized in pop-culture.  Radcliffe has already done some theater work, but this was his first major film foray since the Potter series.  I even heard someone trying to be funny say, "Look, it's Harry Potter" at the beginning of this film.  Hamil never really overcame it enough to be on screen, but he found a niche as a voice actor, probably best known as The Joker from Batman: The Animated Series and the Arkham themed Batman games.  Hopefully, Radcliffe will have better luck on screen. 
• Hinds does great work as he always does.  I looked through his filmography on IMDB, and I didn't realize until then that he had been in so many small roles in big films.  
• The scare factor here was as good as you can hope for in any modern horror movie.  How many ways can we make a shadowy figure jump from the darkness or appear over someone's shoulder before we run out of new ways?  Can we even make something that's honestly scary anymore?  
• I loved the settings.  That's not something I usually mention, but the house and the village where most of the movie takes place look great, and the wide shots of the island where the house rests when the tide is in are awesome.  

The Bad: 

• I could've done without one particularly gross moment with Radcliffe getting all mucky in the marsh.  I feel like it was a little over-extended.  
• A lot of things felt like they were touched on just enough to pull the story together.  The movie really wasn't all that long, and I don't know that - actually, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want - it to be any longer, but there were several aspects of the story where I felt like they just existed to tie things together.  
• The whole visitor from out of town routine in these types of movies is a little played out in my opinion.  Radcliffe's character gets all the could shoulders and hateful stares he can stand, right from the moment he arrives.  
• The acting from the more minor characters left something to be desired.  

The Ugly: 

• Why, oh why, can't we try something new?  Why do we have to do the same scare tactics all the time?  I know that I comment on the scare factor earlier, and it is on par with most modern horror flicks, but that's not saying much.  I can't come up with anything new, but I'm not getting paid millions of dollars for movie scripts either.  
• There were a few of those "scary" moments that I felt were overly cheesy and could've done without.  
• Finally, I almost forgot.  The ending is not what I would've hoped for at all.  

All in all, I would probably recommend this one on DVD/Blu-Ray..  If you're dead set on seeing it in the theater, try to hit a matinee showing.  It'll save you some cash.  You could just watch the official trailer below and see the scariest parts of the movie right now.