Movie Review: The Woman in Black

Another point they didn't touch on was why
the woman scratched out the eyes on the photo.

            I had been waiting for The Woman in Black to come out since I heard about it last fall. Daniel Radcliffe’s non-Harry-Potter film debut looked promising and, above all, creepy. The previews promised a good scare and a great story to back it up. I love haunted old houses with a twist of hidden tragedy behind the mortar and brick. However, as usual, the previews’ promises did not strike true.

            Yes, the house held tragedy. But it was a tragedy not faithfully explained or stuck to within the frame of the plot. The Woman haunted Eel Marsh House due to a sad case of a fatal accident on the road leading up to it and because of sibling betrayal. But the loss of Janet’s son didn’t justify her taking the children from the people of the village. She “forced” them to kill themselves, which sincerely bothered both my brother and I. If she was so PO-ed at her sister, why didn’t she kill the parents instead? The whole “I can’t have my son, so I’m taking all your children” ploy is weak here. Besides, why would a writer, even of a horror movie, take an innocent life and destroy it like the ways in the movie? Yeesh.

            The preview promised to make me jump, give me the creeps. Well…neither was given. I knew when I was supposed to jump (like with Apollo 18), and there was only one part—the rocking chair rocking by itself—that gave me the chills inside, but they ruined that by placing The Woman in it (which was also supposed to make me jump but failed). A rocking chair WITHOUT somebody at all is creepy. Putting a body to the action takes away that weird factor.

            Also, I noticed that the villagers seemed to know more than they let on, or that the story gave us in explanation. And if you’ve seen it, don’t give me that “Oh, they just knew about the woman’s killing” crap, because that’s a sore excuse. They knew; yeah, I get that. But there was more to this village than was written in. Sadly.

            Another thing the writing failed to do was satisfy. As I noted with my review on The Thing, horror movies are NOTORIOUS for rotten, craptastic endings. But the genre’s writers’ general failure is no excuse. Any story, even a horror story, can have a decent ending. The Woman in Black did not. I saw it coming a half-hour before it happened. As soon as I suspected—and was right about—the woman killing the kids, I knew Arthur’s (Daniel Radcliffe’s) four-year-old son Joseph was gonna get it. Which was unnecessary, really. Arthur died with him, but I think he could have thrown Joseph up off the tracks and been the sole and final fatality of the woman’s sick rampage.

This is about as expressive as Mr. Arthur Kipps got

            Now, don’t get me wrong, the writing was bad. The acting was spectacular. Ol’ Dan was sincere and very convincing as a grieving lawyer, and as any old Englishmen should, showed almost no emotion when he started getting freaked out. His body stance said it all; his face? That’s a different story. Even the kid actors were great! The part that made the movie’s bottom fall out was the writing. It was like building a magnificent chandelier with one support ring and a gorgeous display of crystal, only to have it crash around and break because of the lack of structure.

            I really wanted to like this movie. But all I could do was find myself disappointed in the poor plot. I wanted more. Meat, not water. Amateur writing is no excuse for a bad movie. They should have fixed the technicalities in editing the script. The acting, however, saved this movie from my Crap List. 3 kernels out of 5.