The Woman in Black

A young lawyer travels to a remote village where he discovers the vengeful ghost of a scorned woman is terrorizing the locals. (IMBd)

SPOILERS
In a nutshell, the film centres around Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) who is depressed from the loss of his wife and is left to bring up his son. Kipps is assigned to sell a house on a marsh where he is met by the townspeople who don't give him the warmest of welcomes. When Kipps discovers this 'Woman in Black' he realises that the town are under threat from this 'woman' over the loss of her child.

Having seen this film twice at the cinema, I am pretty sure that the certificate SHOULD be a 12A. There is a lot of talk of how this film 'should be a 15' by viewers and to be honest I can't see why. The film is eery and has its moments where you feel on edge but the scares aren't as 'big' as the Paranormal Activity films or any other ghost/demon related film.
If you go back to when The Others was released in 2001, this film was just the same as The Woman in Black and that recieved a certificate 12. Point made.

On the other hand, the films story line was quite interesting. Not the same as the theatre production but what do you expect when a theatre production is made into a film? Daniel Radcliffe's performance was in my opinion average, I felt that he wasn't the right choice to play the role. Besides, for his first role since the 'Harry Potter' films, it was hard to sit there without making any witty remarks to the 'Harry Potter' films. However, after a few minutes of seeing him playing the character of Arthur Kipps, you start to forget that he was once waving a wand about.

The scares started soft then progressed and got bigger, which for me, made it a little silly and found myself slouching with my hand rested on my head. I found the moments where the audience saw 'The Woman in Black' just standing there without the awful screaming she produces more terrifying than her flying everywhere.
I'm sure many people will disagree with me, but I felt that the film could've been made a lot more darker and scarier had they decided to go for the 15 certificate. Maybe with a different actor playing Kipps this could've happened. Instead, we were left with waht can only be said as a boy in a suit.

The film was average and the scares could have been better. Ghost stories are coming into the cinema more frequently and unfortunately, I think 'The Woman in Black' didn't succeed as well as 'Paranormal Activity' or 'Insidious' did. It's a good adaptation of the theatre production, but I felt they could have done a lot more with the film.