"The Woman in Black" (2012)

I find it interesting that Daniel Radcliffe, an "actor" of such international fame, chose this movie to make his post-Potter debut. I put actor in quotes not because I don't think that Radcliffe has the ability or that he did a poor job in the movie, I just mean that I don't count Harry Potter as real acting since he got into the role at 12 and rode it for 8 years.

I think that "The Woman in Black" is a pretty good film and Radcliffe, who plays the main character Arthur Kipps, does a decent job as the lead. A friend that I saw it with commented that it was as if the films creators saw "Insidious" and "The Orphanage" and made this movie. I understand that it is based on a book, but I can't help agreeing with that assessment since my first thought was, this is the back story of the old woman in "Insidious".

I was actually impressed with the suspense the film was able to build at times and thought that the idea was solid, a wronged woman is seeking vengeance upon the town where her son was killed by killing children any time she is seen. The unique thing is that she doesn't kill the children herself or make someone else kill them, she makes the children kill themselves. The opening was good with the little girls jumping out of the window and I liked that there was the small glimpse of the woman's veil and the use of sound in this secen and throughout the movie was really good.

If this film did one thing well, it was the way the used sound. There was a lot of silence and a lot of small, creepy house noises. The one problem that I has was the use of loud jump-scares. If you are going to use silence and house sounds to build suspsense, I think it really weakens the film to continue to break this tension and suspense by having a sink loudly spit water or a crow fly out of the chimeny. By then end, I was cringing when things would get silent and still, not because I though something scary was going to happen, but because I was anticipating another loud, irrelevent "scare".  Also, it works well to have glimpses of her dress and veil sliding by in mirrors when Kipps is first in the house and unsure if he is actually seeing anything, but it gets old when the movie goes on and it has been shown that the woman is real and that Kipps is seeing her.

The main flaw with the film was its overuse of themes/images/motifs. The loud jump scares, the small glimpses of the woman's dress, the fact that we verball and visually establish that the woman is making these children kill themselves on more than one occasion. I just felt like they were not giving the viewer any benefit of the doubt in terms of being able to follow the plot which does not bode well for teh quality of what the people making the film are putting out.

Two good scenes with the woman in them were the small moment when she appeared in the window beside Kipps as he was looking out. It was startling and terrifying because, although he obviously "felt" something beside him, she was gone when he looked. Also, near then end when Kipps is enticing the woman to her sons room where his newly found body lays, I liked that as she was coming down the hall blowing out the candles, there was a brief glimpse of her face in the gloom and then she was suddenly in the corner. It worked very well.

The scene that I thought could have made this movie a lot better if it had been done differently was the scene when Kipps falls asleep and the woman starts to creep up behind him. The filmmakers chose to show this scene from the woman's point of view, something I think was a terrible decision. It would have been so much better to have watched her slowly, creepily approach before Kipps was woken up by the barking dog. After this scene, the tension and scariness of the movie was really kicked up a notch. I think this scene could have been a great spring board for the second half of the movie and made things even better.

Overall, decent movie with a good job by Radcliffe in his first post-Potter role. I am excited to see this at home, away from the annoying people in the theater and the over-loud jump scares.