Review: The Woman In Black

(Originally reviewed in 2012)

Ugh.

Where to begin with this film? Let’s start with the few that were good about this; there were some genuinely creepy moments – such as when Arthur’s looking out the window and we see The Women appear behind him. The fear of the village was obvious and well established, the film didn’t rely on gore to make something scary which I liked and I can appreciate the look of the film, it did seem very dark and Victorian. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]

Now for the rest, the film started off good with three normal girls jumping to their death, this was shot well and set up a good enigma for why did these girls do this. However this good start was a tease as the rest of the film just went downhill, there was absolutely no tension in the film and where there was suppose to be I was just bored. I could tell when there was going to be a jump scare from a mile away – I will admit that there were certain jumps that scared me but I’m so bored of jump scares already. This was so predictable that I called the ending 15 minutes into the film and that’s not me being a smartarse, the people I saw it also knew what was going to happen straight away. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]

The acting was nothing special, Radcliffe brings absolutely nothing to Arthur, I thought that him having his own demons with his wife would make for an interesting sub-plot or even a twist ending but it’s dropped halfway through the film and never brought up again. The villagers were all frightened and if they were in longer they might have been a good character on their own but again they’re dropped from the film and never seen again. The best acting I can say for this film was Elizabeth the grieving mother who seemed convinced her son talking to her but in one pivotal scene this comes off ridiculous and quite frankly not scary. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]

This entire film breaks the number one rule of a horror film, it’s not scary. I can appreciate that this was meant to be a throwback to the Hammer films of old and that perhaps the fact that I’ve never seen a Hammer film means that I didn’t know what to expect but I went into this expecting a film that has an underlying sense of dread running throughout and there wasn’t, there was just; bored, bored, bored, BOO, bored, BOO, bored, bored, bored, BOO. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]

Overall, just a terrible film, tedious, unsurprising and one of the least frightening films I’ve seen in while. Avoid the film. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]

2/10