The Woman in Black is the latest film from the recently arisen Hammer studios, and stars none other than everyone's favourite gawkish prick, Daniel Radcliffe. Harry Potter wants to break away from his most famous role and be a serious actor now, and he's chosen to begin this futile quest with a scary adaptation.

The Woman in Black is about a young estate agent who's sent to a small town where there's a spooky house for him to sort out and sell. Everyone in the town is very suspicious of him and tries to make him leave, but his diligence surpasses their warnings, and he goes to the house, where upon arrival, weird shit happens. Weird shit continues to happen the other 3 times he visits in the following days, when finally the weird shit comes to a head, and the film ends.

The film starts well, with a good, dense atmosphere, and nicely drifts through to the spooky house stuff. One thing to note, you won't be able to not see Daniel as Harry Potter at the beginning, and throughout the scary stuff, you'll be screaming in your mind "EXPECTO PATRONUM!!".

However, once he arrives at the spooky house, the film really drops the ball. The biggest flaw is that for this rather large chunk of the film, the plot moves forward very little, so you're left wondering where the film is going for a big portion of it. What makes things worse is that while these house scenes do make you jump, that's all they do, and the scares are very, very cheap. This film seems to have come from the school of horror that thinks a loud noise and something jumping out is terrifying stuff. Things jumping out and loud noises aren't horror; they're surprise, and saying that a film is scary because things jump out and make loud noises, is like saying that a person is a hilarious comedian because they're good a tickling. Of course they're going to make you jump and your heart beat a little faster, but it isn't horror.

Having said that, there are a few good scary scenes in the film, and these are almost exclusively the ones which aren't things jumping out and making loud noises.

The film finally seg-ways into the final act, which involves the terribly cheesy "We need to reunite her with her dead son so she can be at peace" bit. Once all that nonsense is over though, it builds to what is actually a very, very good ending, which is very suspenseful, and completely catches you off guard.

Overall, it's jam-packed with clichés and cheap scares, but it does have the occasional good moment, and one of my favourite endings that I've seen for a while. It's just a shame that, much like Daniel Radcliffe has to do at one point in the film, you have to wade through a lot of shit to get closure.