Film Review: The Woman In Black

The Woman In Black:

The Woman In Black is pretty good in a non-typical modern horror sort of way. Harry Potter doesn't have a lot to do apart from look slightly ill-at-ease but to be fair to him he never really lost control of where he was at. And by that I mean a lot of other actors could have over-acted their way out of the role or just hammed it up but he set the tone nicely.

There are some genuinely unpleasant and unsettling images that will leave you uneasy (as you would come to expect from any horror) but the thing I liked about this (and what pisses me off about others) is that there was no MacGuffin used to further the plot. Nothing was introduced in the last 10 minutes that felt out of place.

At 78 minutes long it builds the tension quite nicely and you actually feel like you're watching a well thought out story (much like Hammer Horrors used to do back in the day) instead of a rushed splatter-fest that seems to be the norm these days.

While TWIB is not exactly going to set the world on fire it will make you jump (a standard requirement of a Horror you'll no doubt agree) and won't leave you with a bad taste in your mouth when it's over. This along with The Innkeepers are a new breed of film that half one foot firmly planted in reality and that to me makes a Horror much more enjoyable.

The Woman In Black is nothing new or remarkable - but when you consider how the majority of every other Horror film is made these days then it certainly is remarkable in that aspect. I enjoyed it and it'll give you Goosebumps but not nightmares. Definitely worth the look on a cold dark night (and at under an hour & half it'll fly through). Here’s hoping this is the return of Hammer Horror. A steady and sturdy 3/5