Review of The Woman in Black (2012) by Thequietgamer — 21 Nov 2014

The tone is bleak and depressing right from the start. The era is expertly captured and recreated. Even better is that this is a horror movie with genuine scares. There are some lame jump scares, but the atmosphere is king. The way it sets up for the scares by having you stare at some of the most unpleasant looking children's toys is very effective. The plot is solid even if it does commit a way crime too many horror movies do in order to keep things going; making it's characters morons.

It's another horror movie where the town is warns the outsider to leave, but never gives him a reason as to why. When all they do is act unfriendly and drop some of the most vague hints of all time it's not hard to see why they can't get rid of Radcliffe's "Arthur Kipps." However what is unexplainable is why his character sticks around the obviously haunted house for so long.

Every time he hears some unnatural noise or catches a glimpse of a ghoulish specter, despite knowing that it's the work from forces of the beyond, he goes and investigates anyway. It ends up working great for us on one end, because there really are some great scares. However it means that the whole scenario sacrifices intelligence and believability in order to actually exist. It's a sad flaw.

However where "The Woman in Black" succeeds, it succeeds well, and that's in being a genuinely good horror movie. Very rarely are you going to find scares this good. So while it stumbles in intelligence it delivers fear. Considering it's a horror movie that makes it mostly a win. My total score for the movie is a 7.5/10.