I saw the stage version of The Woman in Black a few years ago, before I started going to the theatre again properly and couldn’t help thinking how much better it would work as a film.
There is something you can add to the whole horror/suspense genre on film with music, fleeting glimpse, sudden appearance and well, just the fear you see in the actors face and hear in their breathing when they are up on the big screen.
And this version starring Daniel Radcliffe and Ciaran Hinds proved me right. Radcliffe is not the best actor in the world but solid enough to pull off the young, bereaved and terrified Arthur Kipps contending with a vengeful ghost while trying to sort out the affairs of a bereaved client.
Director James Watkins employs every trick at his disposal to create a creepy and suspenseful drama that chills and even had me jumping out of my skin a few times. It is well done ghost story with a delicious twist to nicely round it off.
Somethings work better on stage - I just can’t bring myself to watch Carnage on the big screen having seen the stage version because even the trailer feels wrong but this is definitely a case of screen winning over stage.
I’m going to give it 75%, on IMDB it's got 71% and a Meta Critic score of 62%. While over on Rotten Tomatoes it has a critics score of 64% and 65% of site visitors gave it three and a half stars or more.
Oh and Mr Radcliffe himself was at the screening I went to, to introduce the film, here's a (not great) pic I snapped of him with James Watkins, there are a couple more over on my Flickr page:
Here's the UK trailer (the US one has a dreadful voice over)
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.