The Woman in Black Movie Review: Rating 4/5

Story: Arthur Kipps is on a mission to a far off English village. He is out there to settle a complicated property dispute. Little does he know there are things more complicated (ghostly and creepy) awaiting his arrival. 

Movie Review: Abracadabra! Avada Kedavra! The boy wizard has grown up. How else do you explain Daniel Radcliffe -- as a widower and busy-yet-caring father -- for pulling it off pretty well when there are hardly any dialogues to deliver... when everything depends on his expression (fear to be precise)... and when the real hero of the movie is none other than the woman in black. But then, who is this woman in black?


Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) travels to the outskirts of England in order to sort out papers left at Eel Marsh House. But then it looks like the remote village is haunted by a vengeful ghost of a scorned woman -- always in black -- who is all out to terrorise the locals by killing their children. Naturally then, the most important task for the lawyer is to first get the killing of innocent lives under control. But how?
 
Now what is it that keeps you glued to your seats till the very end? Daniel Radcliffe's Kipps torn between the spiritual (he lost his wife during childbirth and now has visions of her in her wedding dress, aka his woman in white) and the supernatural (the woman in black who makes it a point to appear again and again till Daniel Radcliffe believes in ghosts). In fact, there are times when you wonder if this is the same Daniel Potter Radcliffe tweens could not get enough of. This is followed by the setting - dark, convincing, timeless. The haunted house in the middle of nowhere (literally) is enough to send chills down your spine. And if that's not all, there is a lot of eeriness to choose from: the bad omen (black crow), creaking of an empty armchair, Daniel Radcliffe spotting the woman in black for the first time in the woods, amidst fire and across window panes, shadows being chased, empty corridors, Daniel peeping from the rooftop without realising there's someone else peeping with him too. It's all in there - the horror -- and the mood first captured by British author Susan Hill in her 1982 novel by the same name.

Tip off: Not really into blood and gore? Not even into theories of the anti-Christ and the Book of Revelation? And yet want your dose of heebie jeebies? Beware The Woman in Black.