James Watkins must have filled his camera with sea glass to achieve the pouting grays and blues dominating his righteously frightening adaptation of Susan Hill's ever-fertile suspense novel. (The 1983 book also spawned a popular TV movie and one of the longest-running stage plays in British theater history.) Playing up moribund Edwardian mores and a damp English setting to maximum drabtastic effect, the director does quiet right by Daniel Radcliffe in his first starring role of the post-Potter era.
A widower attorney in professional flux, Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) is tasked by his firm to settle the estate of Alice Drablow, who resided in the creepiest mansion in the creepiest marsh in the creepiest coastal town imaginable. Kipps has barely filed his first form when he begins experiencing odd supernatural sightings, many of them involving frightful rain-soaked kids with hypothermic faces. The shifty locals, in particular sorrow-filled rich guy Mr. Daily (Ciarán Hinds), soon reveal that the violent spectre of Drablow's sister, Jennet, has long terrorized kiddies to avenge the tragic loss of her young son. It's then up to Kipps, whose presence is visibly unwelcome, to appease the titular monster and secure the life of his own child.
There's nothing mechanically innovative to the scares in The Woman in Black, but they come and go at a sturdy pace bolstered by oddball period props. (Dear god old-timey toys are terrifying!) Radcliffe's character has only one steely setting, but he never once seems or sounds like Harry, and that alone is a accomplishment.
