REVIEW OF THE WOMAN IN BLACK

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Domestic Total as of Feb. 5, 2012: $20,874,072
Distributor: CBS Films	Release Date:February 3, 2012
Genre: Horror Thriller	Runtime: 1 hrs. 35 min.
MPAA Rating: PG-13	Production Budget: N/A

Deadened with grief four years after the death of his wife, Arthur is dispatched to a remote English village to sort out a deceased woman's estate. There, in his own melancholy, the lawyer barely notices how fear has warped the secretive residents of the village, all of whom know and none of whom will tell an outsider what ails them. (Ciarán Hinds and Albert Nobbs Oscar nominee Janet McTeer have fun playing the village's wealthiest residents, the only two who provide hospitality.) Arthur does, at least, begin to wonder about the unusual death rate of village children. Oh, if ghosts could talk! Instead, this inconsolable spirit makes her feelings known through more ghoulish means.

What's Good About the Movie: this classically creepy, unironic tale of loss and vengeance, based on Susan Hill's popular 1983 novel of the same name, pays fair homage to the kind of fare that has long been the specialty of the recently revived British company Hammer Films, where Christopher Lee once reigned as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing personified Baron Frankenstein. The downside is, The Woman in Black devotes an awful lot of time to the sight of Daniel Radcliffe, playing a sad, frock-coated lawyer named Arthur Kipps, creeping anxiously through that haunted house, clutching a candle and an axe, getting nowhere.

What's Bad About the Movie: The Woman in Black embraces the elements of gothic horror movies with pleasing seriousness: If there's a door handle to rattle or floorboard to creak in the ruined mansion at the heart of the story's trouble, this production pauses for the sight and sound. And gray English skies with a likelihood of thick English mist is the unchanging weather forecast

Overall Grade: B