Product Description
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Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a widowed lawyer whose grief
has put his career in jeopardy, is sent to a remote village to
sort out the affairs of a recently deceased eccentric. But upon
his arrival, it soon becomes clear that everyone in the town is
keeping a deadly secret. Although the townspeople try to keep
Kipps from learning their tragic history, he soon discovers that
the house belonging to his client is haunted by the ghost of a
woman who is determined to find someone and something she lost…
and no one, not even the children, are safe from her vengeance.
.com
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Fans of classically structured haunted house/ghost stories will
relish the skillfully unnerving chain of events in The Woman in
Black, whether or not they're fans of Harry Potter. The good new
is that Daniel Radcliffe leaves Harry behind for good in his
first post-Potter role. Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a young
solicitor tasked with resolving the affairs of a recently
deceased woman and her brooding estate in the gloom of the remote
Victorian England-era village of Crythin Gifford. The mood is
melancholic all around, starting with Kipps himself, who lost his
wife to childbirth a few years earlier. His employer has had just
about enough of his moping about and gives him the assignment as
a last resort to save his job. When he arrives in the small
village, the icy response he receives does not bode well for
successful completion of his mission. All the townspeople want
him gone, and possibly for good reason. Many of their children
have died mysteriously gruesome deaths that they blame on the
titular black-clad woman whose own child was tragically sucked to
his death in the muck surrounding her seaside mansion. This new
stranger who wants to unearth the deadly secrets trapped in the
decrepit old house is a threat they cannot abide, and sure enough
the deaths keep on coming as he delves deeper into the dark
recesses of the house and the history of its ghostly occupant.
There are es enty in The Woman in Black, and they come
from a genuineness that relies on creep-outs rather than
gross-outs. Faces in windows, apparitions barely there,
slow-building moodiness that suddenly erupts into a silent scream
(or sometimes not so silent) make for an extremely effective and
often terribly unnerving atmosphere of dread. The movie comes
with several impressive pedigrees as well. It's based on a
popular novel published in the early '80s, which was also adapted
into a long-running hit play. The movie additionally resurrects
the Hammer Films brand, an esteemed British production company
that churned out moody and distinctive horror films and
exploitive psycho-thrillers for decades in the mid 20th century.
Indeed, the presence of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee seems
to lurk around every dusty, cobwebbed corner in The Woman in
Black, right behind the slamming doors and only just glimpsed in
the flickering candlelight. Radcliffe is perfect for the role of
a heartbroken man whose rationality is stretched to the point of
no return by the things he may or may not be seeing. Several
strong supporting performances add to the gravitas, especially
Ciarán Hinds as a kindred soul and her figure to Kipps, and
perhaps the only other rational man in Crythin Gifford. But then
rationality has almost nothing to do with the disquieting spirit
of this authentically enigmatic, finely understated and
efficiently chilling return to classic horror. --Ted Fry