Short, quick and to the point, "The Woman In Black" is a genuinely old-fashioned ghost story that doesn't fall into the trap that hampers too many contemporary horror movies. That trap -- which is, the more gore you have, the better -- is avoided. The film is subtle about its violence, and succeeds, when it is successful, which is not always, because director James Watkins keenly understands the value of building up tension for what frightens an audience.
If your idea of a horror movie is to have it filled with slash-and-burn histrionics, then this isn't for you. However, if you appreciate a good yarn with small scares, and a mostly clever, albeit familiar, sense of creepy goings-on, then you'll probably find "The Woman In Black" satisfying. It's often filled with cliches, but thanks to a very good cast, you go with the picture until the so-so ending, which did not satisfy me.
The film takes place in a misty England in some nebulous decade. The period clothing and set decorations hint at the late Victorian Era.
Daniel Radcliffe is Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor (lawyer), who isn't particularly experienced at his job. He's also a widower with a little boy, which becomes an important element because children in a marshy setting elsewhere have been dropping like flies. He's so despondent over the death of his wife that he considers killing himself.
Kipps is sent to a strange village many miles north of his London residence. In the village is a decrepit, shuttered mansion in which a woman died leaving an estate that's a mess. Kipps' mission, should he choose to accept it, is to find out what's going on, prepare the old house for sale, and get the estate's papers in order.
After his arrival, there's a nice villager with a car (Ciaran Hinds) who offers to drive Kipps up the wretched single lane to the door of the equally wretched home. This villager's wife (Janet McTeer) is convinced there's evil in place. Once we're inside the structure, the movie starts rolling along in its haunted house mode. Doors creak. Dogs howl. Davenports shift. Something wicked this way comes.
Radcliffe is a talented actor, so you enjoy the adventure because he brings a nice believability to his role. He has a earnest, eager face that seems to belong to another time, which is helpful.
We learn of the death of a number of children, with more possibly to come. How nutty was the old lady who lived in the house? Off the charts, think some.
"The Woman In Black" is a spooky ghost yarn that looks as if it was made in the past. It makes no concessions to modern conventions of what's scary. The ghosts bump, but they don't grind. This is the least vulgar contemporary horror movie you may ever see. It wears its old-fashioned feel with pride. I admire this aspect, but wish it hadn't relied on so many of the standard hits from ghost pictures of an earlier era, when innocent moviegoers really believed trains were barreling at them from the screen.
Of course, there is a wonderful tradition behind the nostalgia. The movie is the first feature made by a resurrected Hammer Films, that grand old studio that delivered the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in carts, coffins and chambers of horror.
The movie is based on a 1983 novel by Susan Hill. The screenplay, which could have been written with a fountain pen, is by Jane Goldman.
"The Woman In Black" is atmospheric to a fault. Can a film have a wet look? This one does.
After 95 minutes, you realize that you've been to a fun amusement park, but that the rides have been mostly for children. Well, not the kids that have been victims in the movie, but you know what I mean.
Upon exiting the theater, I understood what I had just seen. It's the first movie aimed directly at 13-year-olds who need something to watch during their first babysitting job. A teensy bit scary, but not scary enough to wake up the dead.
Like clockwork, at the beginning of the new year, there's a Liam Neeson action movie to delight his fans. When you consider the artful work done earlier in his career, I'm sure Neeson never expected to have action fans, but he does. My favorite is "Taken," in which Neeson is an operative-turned-security guard whose daughter is kidnapped during a trip to Paris.
This season we've got "The Grey," which is not a film for people who like wolves. This is a living billboard for the notion that the wolf is an evil animal.
Neeson is a macho man who is the boss of a team that guards oil rigs and oil pipelines and all that oil stuff in the frozen beauty of Alaska. He's heading to the oil fields in a plane with some other rough-and-tumble types when it crashes. Some die. Some survive. Help should be on theÊway, assures Neeson. Nah. Not for 117 minutes.
As the survivors gather and decide what to do, a pack of wolves gather and decide what they are going to do. We've seen compassion from Neeson, who has comforted one of his dying men. Now we are about to see how uncompassionate he is. Survival of the fittest is the catch phrase. If "The Grey" has a philosophical discussion in its icy screenplay by director Joe Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, it's this: Kill wolves or be eaten by them.
The snarling, vicious, hungry wolves attack. It's their turf and they've got to eat, but that's not what's at play here. Panic and fear grip the men. They are picked off like ducks in a snowy shooting gallery. Bones are crunched. Blood pours out of gaping wounds. Violence ensues. Who gets to go home?
"The Grey" reminds me of those Charles Bronson films in which he was roaming around the wilderness shooting bears or bounty hunters, always with a backdrop of harsh white weather.
There's not a shred of originality in the movie. The standard dialogue consists of what you'd expect men in such a life-threatening situation to say. The dull direction is unobtrusive.
As expected and, I assume, welcomed by his fans, Neeson elevates his stern demeanor to intense gut-check proportions. He brought his team to Alaska and he sure as heck is going to get them out. Well, those who haven't been human fodder for the furry fangs.
Someone in Hollywood is convinced that Katherine Heigl has what it takes to be a movie star. I'm here to tell them she doesn't. She's fine on television, but there's something missing when she acts in films.
The same holds true for Jennifer Aniston. I've written repeatedly that whatever she has that makes her a TV star is not what's necessary to make her a motion picture star. Aniston fades on the big screen.
The same argument holds true for Channing Tatum, a slab of beefcake, who has an inexplicable movie career, but offers little believable acting in films. More on him later this month when yet another Tatum vehicle opens.
A blonde, Heigl dons a dark wig to play the iconic Stephanie Plum, the bounty hunter heroine of 18 hugely successful novels by mystery writer Janet Evanovich. The movie is called "One For The Money," which is the first book in the popular Plum series. Supposedly more theatrical features are planned, but considering the failure of this enterprise, I doubt there'll be more than one additional effort.
It took three misguided screenwriters (Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray and Liz Brixius) to come up with the emptiness found in "One For The Money." I have read the book and a few other Plum mysteries, and as I watched the film, I wondered if the writers had read what I did.
When a character such as Plum takes hold in the imagination of readers, there are certain character traits that the novelist relies on and the reader remembers. What's comical in the book -- and there is humor in Evanovich's work -- comes across as silly in the movie.
Part of the problem is that Heigl thinks she's funny, when she actually isn't. I've seen her on television talk shows, and although she comes across as a nice enough person, her humor is always forced. That's a negative factor that transfers to the screen.
In the film, Stephanie goes to work for a bail bondsman to snare an on-the-run corrupt cop, who may not be all that corrupt. There are peripheral characters and family members and a possible love interest for the newly divorced Plum.
Debbie Reynolds chews the scenery as granny to the point where you marvel that there are any sets left standing. Daniel Sunjata acts with his pumped-up pecs, which announce that he's the movie's hunk whenever he shows up. A too-familiar John Leguizamo plays that vaguely Hispanic or Latino fast-talking character that he always plays that you wonder if he even knows what nationality he is. Time for a new agent, John.
And Sherri Shepherd, one of the discordant noises on "The View," proves once again that just because someone has manufactured a television personality doesn't mean they can act in movies. Stunt -asting rarely works. Didn't anybody in Hollywood learn anything from that grease-fire-waiting-to-happen celebrity cook Paula Deen's failure to succeed as Aunt Dora in Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown"? Hers is a performance so leaden that it helped destroy the movie's distribution hopes.
"One For The Money" is marginally directed by Julie Anne Robinson, a TV director whose previous feature film was the excruciating "The Last Song." Judging from her work in this new movie, one gets the impression that Robinson was wrangling cats. Scenes are cluttered with actors and nobody seems to know what to do.
Stephanie Plum definitely deserved better.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 7 2012 |