The thing that strikes you about the new Gothic ghost story THE WOMAN IN BLACK is how little talking there is. There are huge passages of this film that are completely dialogue free, and by committing to that filmmaking style, director James Watkins (maker of the little-known but well worth checking out EDEN LAKE) removes any distractions we might have from being as tense and scared as we possibly can. And believe me, you will spend a great deal of time being both while watching this one. Sure, Watkins throws in a few cheap thrills in the process (a bird flying out of a chimney springs to mind), but most of his scares are well-earned in this classic tale of vengeful spirits courtesy of the folks at the revitalized Hammer Film.
A much older looking Daniel Radcliffe (well, he looks older than a wizard schoolboy now) plays Arthur Kipps, a widowed lawyer whose wife died during childbirth, and who has been thrust into single parenthood to raise his son. His work at his law firm has also suffered as a result of his grief, and when his superior sends him to a small village in the English countryside to settle the estate of a recently deceased woman, he makes it clear that if he screws things up, his days at the firm are through. One of the more interesting aspect of THE WOMAN IN BLACK is how shrouded in death everything is even before Arthur gets to the village, where it's very clear that he is not welcome and that his very presence seems to send the parents of the community into a frenzy of hiding their children. The open sequence of the film is of three little girls having a tea party, suddenly stopping their play, and jumping out a high window to their certain death. As a fellow Chicago critic pointed out to me, there is an awful lot of child death for a PG-13-rated movie. Whatever you do, don't let that rating fool you; it in no way reduced the number of truly terrifying moments.
The one man in the village who befriends Arthur is Mr. Daily (Ciaran Hinds), perhaps the richest man in the area, who lost a child a few years earlier, an incident from which his wife (Janet McTeer) has never truly recovered. The plot (adapted the great Jane Goldman, based on the Susan Hill novel) doesn't try to hide the fact that there's a ghost at the center of the tragedies that have befallen this community, and that somehow Arthur's presence on the estate has stirred her up once again.
The scenes I love the most (and thankfully they take up most of the film) are when Arthur is working in the haunted mansion, sifting through piles of disorganized papers, trying to do his job. When Daily drops him off one morning and offers to pick him up that night, and Arthur says he'd prefer to work through the night, you can't help but smile as the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Inevitably, Arthur hears a noise in the house and begins investigating, going room by room through the barely candlelit manor. We dread him opening each new door, and in many ways director Watkins has recreated the best moments of a carnival spook house with his endless number of hallways, staircases and creepy, unused rooms.
There's certainly nothing overly slick about THE WOMAN IN BLACK, although the production values are high and the sets are beautifully realized. Radcliffe does a remarkable job of making us realize that this is a man who isn't afraid of death since he's been living in its shadow for so long, he actually might enjoy the company of a dead woman who is looking for something she has lost, much like himself. And while there are certainly moments where you question his ability (or sense) to even open another door that will likely reveal some new horror, we're right there with him and his curious face to see what we can see.
I also loved some of the film's small (if wildly implausible) touches, such as the long driveway to the house that is literally swallowed by the tide a couple times a day, making it impossible to leave for hours at a time. If memory serves, the estate is called Marsh House, but did they actually have to build it in the middle of a marsh? Why not Marsh Adjacent House? But this geographical detail makes for some great visuals, especially in the rain-soaked climax. But what I enjoyed most about THE WOMAN IN BLACK is that it seems to celebrate the ability of minimal, largely practical effects, a rich soundscape, an understated score, and strong performances to tell a wonderfully scary story (For those reasons, the film shares a healthy DNA with the great 2001 ghost story The Others, but without the twist ending.) It seems obvious, but it were so obvious, why don't more filmmakers do it? I hope Watkins continues making such riveting works in the future; he makes me feel slightly more optimistic about the future of this kind of atmospheric horror.
