The Woman in Black

Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe stars in this period horror film. He plays a young widower and father, working in an attorney’s office. While his employer sympathizes with his grief of his wife’s death in childbirth(several years now since his son is four years old), he gives Arthur one last chance to buckle down. Arthur is to go through the papers of a client who has died, to make sure there is not another will in existence. When Arthur gets to the client's town, the innkeeper claims he has no room for him and puts him up in the attic, where we see in a prologue his three daughters jumped out the window and killed themselves. Several other children have killed themselves or died in similar creepy and mysterious accidents, which Arthur finds out in time. He is befriended by a wealthy couple (Ciaran Hinds, Janet McTeer) who have also lost a child, whom the wife claims possesses her and speaks through her.


Arthur goes to the client’s house which twice a day is isolated by a tide that comes in and covers up the only road. He sees a mysterious woman in black which signals another child dying in mysterious circumstances. There are lots of typical horror movie spooks such as objects moving by themselves, doors that were closed are suddenly open, creepy noises, things we see that Arthur doesn’t. Arthur continues to piece together the story, at the end of which he tries to placate the woman in black by reuniting her with her dead son, so that she doesn’t cause the death of his own son or any more children. I thought the feel good ending was kind of silly.

There was lots of nervous laughter in the audience and I admit it was pretty spooky at times. It has lots of expected atmosphere to make you jump. Radcliffe’s character needed to be more spooked by the circumstances earlier in the film, as he appears to only be scared during the denouement when he sees for himself up close the lady and her son (he still seems a bit young to have a four year old son). I wondered why the people of this town chose to stay here instead of moving away to keep their children safe. A pretty decent historical horror movie.