• Movies

by Dr Chris on 02.16.12

The early efforts by the rebooted studio, Hammer Film Productions, are checkered to say the least. While their releases include the critically acclaimed Let Me In, a US remake of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, they have also included the vampire flick Beyond the Rave and the lackluster The Resident - both of which haven't found any type of box office success. But Simon Oakes, the chief executive and president of Hammer, has stated that those were only “building blocks” setting up the studios ambitious next move: a $13 million adaptation of The Woman in Black. Like the classic Hammer movies, this ghost story, shot in Britain, is a period piece with a high-toned pedigree. 

This film is adapted from a Susan Hill novella, which also became a long-running West End play. Starring in The Woman in Black, in his first post-Harry Potter film role, Daniel Radcliffe plays a guilt-ridden father and lawyer who starts seeing ghosts while going through the estate of a recently deceased woman. This woman was torn away from her child and will stop at nothing to make the town suffer by killing all its children in gruesome deaths. Its chilling and can be jumpy at times and gives you this sense that something is going on in the background that's going to give you that scare you wouldn't expect to happen.

Radcliffe gives a clear-eyed, plausibly grown-up performance as Arthur Kipps; the young lawyer summoned to the gothic, worn down mansion to settle its recently-deceased owner’s estate. He does an amazing job getting away from the boy wizard he grew up as and almost makes you believe his is this father rightly worried about his own child in this film.

The movie is directed by James Watkins, who has several horror credits under his name including Eden Lake, Gone, The Decent Part 2 and an intersting documentary on horror films, Into the Dark: Exploring the Horror Film. The script is written by the very sexy and talented Jane Goldman whose writing credits include X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass, The Debt and Stardust.

Hammer is definitely headed in the write direction; for every great film like  Let Me In there is a film like The Resident. But The Woman in Black shows this new Hammer team is well on its way to great things. The only downside I saw with The Woman in Black was a bland ending which takes away from the film itself, but nothing that should keep anyone from watching the film all the way through. On a sidenote, recently Hammer has announced a relaunch of their classic Dracula series: a series we can only hope its as spooky and well done as The Woman in Black.