The Woman in Black Movie Review

What?! Harry Potter in a horror movie?! Yes, you have not gone to the Twilight Zone since the series has come to an end he has to move onto new movies. Here's my review for his latest movie The Woman in Black.

Synopsis: A young lawyer is sent to a remote village to settle the affairs of a house that is out of the way from civilization. This is his last chance to prove that he is not grieving from his wife's death and left alone to care after their son. When he arrives at this small town the local are not friendly and he gets more than he bargained for.


Review: For those of you who are familiar with Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter it will be a bit odd to see him playing an adult with a child. Regardless of his age his voice is still high pitched and I had some trouble with him being casted in this movie, but I think this is what happens when someone plays the role of an iconic character for so long. If you can get past that then you should enjoy the movie.

Now this movie is based on a Victorian gothic novel by Susan Hill, which from my research as written in the 1980s. Could have fooled me I thought it was published along the same time as Edgar Allan Poe's work. I have not read this book, nor am I familiar with it so I cannot say how the two compare.

Since this is a Victorian goth story and not a modern day horror story there is no gore and is more of a suspense and haunted house kind of movie. Which is not bad it is done very well. Now I was not scared watching this, but there were some scenes that gave me goose bumps. I cannot tell you the last time a movie has done that. Those scenes also might have made me jump if I was in the right setting ie watching this in the dark alone on a rainy night.

Some other random thoughts that popped in my head while watching this were:

• The movie feels like I am watching a Masterpiece Theater production on PBS
• In the nursery when all the toys are going off one of them makes the sound that I swear is Jigsaw from the Saw movies. 
• During the haunting scenes in the house Radcliffe does all the same things you would expect someone to do if they were in a haunted house.

I will say that after watching this movie I am still a little confused to why this woman was doing this to the children. I won't say what as to not spoil the movie. There was little back story, which would have been helpful. Radcliffe's character never really discovered much. It was more about his experience in the house. 

I also tried to find some lore on what it means to see a woman wearing black. Now I am sure if you know even a little bit about ghosts or watch the show Supernatural then you have heard of a woman in white. I was wondering if there was something similar for a woman in black. I had no luck. I know that in those times woman would wear black if they were grieving the death of a love one. Which was very common, but I wanted to know if it symbolized something else. I wasn't able to find anything, but maybe someone out there knows. 

So overall a very good movie with some minor plot holes. Also the ending was unexpected and sort of refreshing after all the crappy movies I have been watching lately.  If you like a good ghost story that might be a little lacking on details this is the one for you.