Daniel Radcliffe haters should cut him some slack. He’s done with Harry Potter, he’s played the same part for 10 years, and he’s a grown up young man now. He could very easily retire with his gazillions, but it’s to his credit that Radcliffe works outside the world of HARRY POTTER.
New on DVD: THE WOMAN IN BLACK is an old fashioned horror movie, produced by a recently revived Hammer Horror Studios. Hammer Horror was the English studio that specialized in Gothic horror films in the 1960s and 1970s, making stars of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
At $16 million, a relatively low budget film (especially compared to the SPFX-heavy POTTER films), THE WOMAN IN BLACK is set in Victorian times, following the travails of a young London lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), who is sent to a small village to settle the affairs of an estate.
The giant gloomy mansion – imagine the glorious home in DOWNTOWN ABBEY run down and penniless and dark – is the ultimate haunted house. The cinematography is gloriously English with mists and moors and nighttime fog so thick, you just know there are ghosts swirling about. And while young Kipps – himself a recent widower – faces a hostile reception from the villagers, he soon begins to unravel the mysterious deaths of the local children.
It’s creepy stuff, and it works very well. Director James Watkins steers the film into old fashion spooky noises and creepy sounds territory, while taking some modern approaches that take a nod to recent Japanese horror fare (THE GRUDGE) and to gamers. There are times when Kipps is exploring the mansion, that the camera POV is like a first-person shooter video game.
Radcliffe has surprisingly few lines in the movie – his performance is of wide-eyed wonder and horror – which he does very well. Free from Harry Potter make-up, he looks older, haunted, weary, successfully embodying the character of Kipps. You don’t expect this frightened young lawyer to suddenly whip out a wand to fight any phantoms!
As a horror movie, highly recommended. It gets its scares the old fashioned way with a creepy yarn and things that go bump in the night. And Radcliffe’s performance – along with his must-see sleeper, DECEMBER BOYS – is proof positive that he has a firm career trajectory post-Hogwarts.
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