The most frightening thing is how terrible Daniel Radcliffe is as a leading actor

By Chris Tookey for MailOnline
Updated: 20:46 EST, 24 January 2012

The Woman In Black (12A)

Verdict: Not scary enough

Rating: 2 Star Rating

Susan Hill’s horror novella about a young, widowed solicitor being traumatised within a very, very haunted house has already had a successful life in the theatre, where it has been scaring audiences for 23 years.

I am sorry to report that the movie version is nowhere near as terrifying.

The most frightening thing about it is how terrible Daniel Radcliffe is as a leading actor.

Thriller: Radcliffe in a scene from The Woman In Black

Thriller: Daniel Radcliffe in a scene from The Woman In Black

In his first post-Harry Potter role, he’s dull and inexpressive, and he’s worryingly dead behind the eyes.

The part requires a star who looks as if he is being tormented to death. What it gets is a young man who seems frozen with first night nerves.

The most frightening horror films of recent years – and here I’m thinking of The Others, The Orphanage and the under-appreciated 1480 – all had fine central performances, by Nicole Kidman, Belen Rueda and John Cusack respectively.

Radcliffe isn’t in the same class.

Just as disappointing is the script by Jane Goldman. In the theatre, audiences become complicit in the tale’s unfolding because they have to use their imagination. 

In the movie production, where little is left to the imagination, we remain fatally uninvolved. It’s an uninspired compendium of haunted house clichés, with a twist that barely deserves to be called one.

Up-and-coming British director James Watkins orchestrates the proceedings efficiently, and makes the audience jump a few times. But the shocks are tame  – the 12A certificate is itself a giveaway – and he brings nothing original to the genre.

The Woman in Black is not a patch on Watkins’ last venture into horror, Eden Lake, which was not only scary, it actually had something to say. And there the cast looked as if it had been recruited on merit, and not with one eye on the box office.

I wouldn’t wish to reveal too much, but the gradually revealed back story begs more questions than it answers. Why is the dead woman in black so determined to wreak havoc not only on the family she resents, but also on all the local inhabitants’ children and, indeed, any grown-up who visits the house?

Instead of being plausibly frightening, her behaviour comes across as a preposterous over-reaction, even for a disgruntled ghost.

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