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In this day and age, it’s gratifying to see that the old fashioned Victorian ghost
story is alive and well. Or at least so I thought, until I found that Susan Hill’s
novel The Woman in Black was written in 1982. Victorian it most certainly is though.
Mutton chop whiskers – check; street urchins – check; fog that turns on and off
like a light – check; Harry Potter – che---heywaidaminute… In one of the year’s
more surprising casting decisions, the boy wizard returns in his first film since
DH2, anxious to prove that he’s not a one-global-franchise-pony. And mostly succeeds.
The plot centres round one Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor grieving for his wife
who died giving birth to his four-year-old son. He takes on a job nobody else wants
in order to prove to his paymasters that he’s still up for it, despite said bosses
getting a fed up with all that moping. Not that this should be news to Arthur, since
his son only ever draws him with a grumpy face. He’s told to shape up or ship out,
and ship out he does to Eel Marsh House, whose owner has died leaving mountains of
paperwork needing dealt with. This is where the usual ghost story tropes set in.
Monsoon-style rain greets him at the station, a landowning squire gives him a lift
in his Roller, villagers look at him in a “we-don’t-like-strangers-round-‘ere” way
and usher their grubby progeny indoors, and the aforementioned fog rolls in and out
like the hokey cokey. But the atmosphere is well set, with a few “boo” moments having
me jump out of my seat in the prescribed manner before and between the requisite
Night In Haunted House set pieces. Without giving too much away, there’s a Dark
Secret In That There House. If the villagers had let Arthur know what it is, of
course, they might have saved him a lot of bother - he could have just cancelled
the milk and papers and been on his way. They don’t of course, and he needs to spend
a couple of nights finding out what it is. Hint – he’s not going to like it.
This film is nicely done. Jane Goodman (Mrs Jonathan Ross) has adapted the source
material sympathetically, with far fewer swearies than some of her other material.
Radcliffe tries hard to make us believe he’s old enough to have a four-year-old
son, mostly by sporting three-day stubble at all times, and the deft amendments to
the book and play’s plot to allow him to be grieving now rather than later allow
him to show his doleful acting chops rather better than his previous eight vehicles.
He may actually turn out to be an actor of note. The abiding memory of the film
though is the atmosphere the director James Watkins creates. The fog, the dark and
the enmity are all used skilfully to develop a sense of foreboding which ratchets
up the tension unbearably. The best compliment I can pay the director, however,
is that he knows when to release that tension – when we least expect it. Genuinely
scary.
