The Woman In Black
Daniel Radcliffe
Directed by James Watkins
95 minutes too long


I remember watching reruns of old school Hammer horrors films on afternoon tv or late night Creature Feature. I remember being scared of Christopher Lee, fangs bloodied and bare as Dracula, or Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein. I'm glad Hammer is coming back...but this ain't a good start.  Set in Edwardian era a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps is still suffering from the loss of his wife who died giving childbirth to his now 4 year old son. Kipps is in trouble with his law firm because although he has time to grieve he has to get back to work or risk losing his job.

He's assigned to take over sifting documents left by the late Alice Drablow (nice name), former owner of the estate Eel Marsh (again, nice name). Much like westerns and classic Universal horror films, the town ain't partial to strangers. The only townsfolk minus torches and pitchforks is Sam Daily and his wife who take Kipps in. Sam takes Kipps to the Drablow estate to work.  After some digging about and a few cheap un-scary boo scares, discovers Alice had a sister who was a smidgen insane and was overcome with grief after the death of her son, and hung herself. She is the titular Woman in Black, and since then no one in the town seems to have kids that live to 10 before a horrible “accident” befalls them.

While in the town one child dies from drinking lye, and another burned in a fire. Anyway...the film then turns to the much overused “lets solve how the dead person died, and set things right” cliche  not realizing that once a vengeful ghost, always a vengeful ghost and it backfires into a bittersweet ending.

The town knows there's no chance of procreation there. Why not move? And I'm tired of “unfinished business” ghost stories. “Wooooooo....somebody killed me and the cops were too incompetent to solve the case and I don't have Jennifer Love Hewitt’s cell phone number...wooooooooo...”
I'd be like if I find him can I enjoy my new house I can't afford in the 1st place?  All in all, no dis to Radcliffe or the other actors, but the story was waaaay to slow, and just not scary. I was half asleep when the big scare scene came up and I didn't flinch.