Film Review: The Woman in Black

After terrifying readers and audience members of its respective novel and stage adaptation, the acclaimed heritage of Susan Hill’s potboiling shocker could only be poorly served by cinema. This was a fate suffered by The Golden Compass (previously a wildly imaginative West End production) but recently overcome by the stellar War Horse (likewise, following a stage version). The problem lies in the adage of ‘less is more’, theatre knows this and therefore has to compensate. Film isn’t constrained by 20 by 15 feet of stage (unless specified by the filmmaker, a’la Lars Von Trier’s Dogme phase) and in the case of such a high profile production, subtlety goes out the window, nuance is abandoned and invention isn’t catered for because the production has neither the impetus nor the ability to separate itself from the needs of boosting production value. This is one of the many issues nagging at the undead heart of Hammer’s newest foray into mainstream chills.

This is most evident in the music. Entire sequences are badly served by Marco Beltrami’s lacklustre score. It’s one thing to create unmemorable incidental music, it’s another to play it so persistently and overtly over moments that command underplay. Being loud and unimpressive, not good odds.
The story itself is tired and indeed tiring, two thirds of the story being devoted to drearily spouting exposition and exploring a location whose mystery isn’t even introduced properly until the third act. It’s one thing to deprive us of information; sure we’ll ask questions, but only if the clues are interesting enough.

The scares come into effect in the third and final act, and they come thick and fast (and god knows, the film needs them by this point). Director James Watkins of Eden Lake (an ASBO centric take on I Spit On Your Grave with Daily Mail pandering paranoia in the vein of Reefer Madness) does demonstrate some knowhow in conjuring some spooky rumblings. Pulling out all the haunted house tropes (eerie china dolls, creaky floorboards, overgrown weeds and dust, glorious dust) with reverential abandon. Some work, but one can’t shake off the feeling that they’re not much more than production design indulgences foisted upon the film, on the basis of Hammer’s schlock heritage.

At centre stage is Daniel Radcliffe, taking the role of young solicitor Arthur Kipps. Radcliffe does an admirable job with what is not much more than a ‘stick in the mud’ rendition of Sleepy Hollow’s Ichabod Crane. Kipps has all of Crane’s timidity, but none of his idiosyncrasy or more crucially, his cynicism. Radcliffe is therefore saddled with a character who doesn’t offer much beyond his stoic Potter persona, unfortunate as Radcliffe could easily have delivered a much more dynamic character if the writing allowed him.

The Woman in Black is neither a truly lacklustre experience nor a necessarily exceptional one, it is an experience of individually effective components. But a handful of scares can’t save a story that only kicks in during the third act. The production values overwhelm and paradoxically rob the film of its atmosphere. Less could have indeed, been so much more.

6/10.