Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
The story follows a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps, who is ordered to travel to a remote village and sort out a recently deceased client’s papers. As he works alone in the client’s isolated house, Kipps begins to uncover tragic secrets, his unease growing when he glimpses a mysterious woman dressed only in black. Receiving only silence from the locals, Kipps is forced to uncover the true identity of the Woman in Black on his own, leading to a desperate race against time when he discovers her true identity.
The Woman in Black (2012) is a competent gothic horror revival from Hammer Films, anchored by strong atmospheric cinematography that makes excellent use of the fog-drenched Eel Marsh House setting. The visual dread is genuinely well-crafted, with careful framing and lighting evoking classic haunted-house unease. Daniel Radcliffe's performance is serviceable but uneven — he carries the physical isolation well but struggles to fully convince as a grieving widower lawyer. The plot follows a fairly conventional ghost-story structure with few surprises beyond its source material, and the remake label underscores its lack of originality. The ending is the film's weakest point, opting for a bleak but somewhat arbitrary resolution that feels tonally mismatched and leaves audiences unsatisfied rather than hauntingly moved. Novelty is low given it treads well-worn gothic territory without a distinctive enough voice to stand apart from its peers or the original 1989 adaptation.