The Woman In Black

Saw this Friday night with Melinda. It's pretty good, and a bit more subtle than the reviewers are giving it credit for. Very subtle, really, for a movie that keeps on relying on shock cuts to a screaming ghost going SKREEE! in the viewer's face. Daniel Radcliffe is rather good in the role of David Tennant, err, Mr. Kipps, a lawyer who's been stumbling through life since the death of his wife four years prior, and who gets one last chance from his employer to pull himself together.
The chance, of course, takes him to a spooky house in a spooky town in spooky countryside, where a vengeful ghost has been offing the local kids in gruesome ways for years. Of course, none of the locals will give Kipps so much as a declarative sentence as they try to hustle him out of town, but he's fighting for his job, and so things go predictably sideways.
Positives include the performances from Radcliffe and Ciaran Hinds, the nods to spiritualism and automatic writing, and an absolutely heartwrenching performance from Mary Stockley as a woman who lost her child to the ghost years ago. There are a few real shocks, and the conventions of the English ghost story are nicely respected. Negatives include way too many shots of creepy monkey toys and Radcliffe staring pensively down a dark hallway, along with some slightly dodgy continuity. On the whole, it's a solid first effort from the new Hammer studios, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes horror movies but doesn't need a couple hundred gallons of blood onscreen to get in the mood.