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Through the spaces between my fingers, I fell in love with the horror film that is “The Woman in Black.”
This movie caught my attention immediately when I saw that Daniel Radcliffe was the starring actor. Seeing him not in his Hogwarts attire made things a little difficult, but to see his acting skills in a different genre made this movie even more enjoyable.
Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) is a widower, who lost his wife during child birth, who is soon to lose his job. His last hope to keep his job at his law firm is to prove to his boss that he is able to work even though he is a complete and total wreck while trying to get over his death of his wife as well as raise his four year old son, Joseph (Misha Handley). This is his final chance and all he has to do is go through paperwork at a house in a small town near London. Sounds pretty simple, but of course things are never as they seem.
Arthur travels to the small village where right away he is not welcomed. The village gives off a spine-tingling and ominous feeling that radiates fear and suspense into the audience. Everyone in the village has been anything but welcoming to him besides one man, who is determined to help him with his work as well as feel comfortable in this cursed town. In only four days, Arthur is left to complete a good deal of work, until he is confronted by a woman outside the house covered in black.
Of course, this seems strange and he knows nothing about this woman, yet he soon finds out that whenever the woman has been spotted, a child in the town is killed in some sort of cruel and unusual manner. Unable to fulfill his purpose of traveling to this daunting village, Arthur is prepared to confront this woman who has cursed this town and will make sure that this town’s children are safe before his son comes to visit him. Yet, with only an axe and a candle, what can a young lawyer really do against a ghost?
The movie, something that I went into the theater thinking that this was going to be a piece of cake, easy to watch PG-13 movie, I was proven that this was anything but that. It wasn’t truly a horrific movie, rather it was very suspenseful that kept you on the edge of your seat wanting to see what was going to happen in this haunted house or maybe sink deep into your chair, wishing that it would become day time again so Arthur would finally leave that house. Constantly, I was screaming due to great effects that scared you with birds flying into the screen, in addition to ghouls and dead children popping in and out of scenes.
This movie was definitely a great movie, with a surprising plot line that is not revealed in the trailers, and will make any Harry Potter fan love Daniel Radcliffe more than they already do. The only difficult for me as viewer and new movie reviewer was that I had to force myself to not want to get my mind set in the idea that at any point, Daniel Radcliffe was going to pull out a wand and that when the door wouldn’t open, screaming Alohomora at the screen was going to do absolutely nothing, yet the woman in black did a great job distracting me from not only seeing him as Harry Potter but as well as discovering that every town and every house, truly does have skeletons in the closet.
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