Widow Alice Drablow has died, leaving behind a house, the “Eel Marsh” house, and properties that need to be settled as she has no living heirs. Alice had a son, but he died when he was just a child. Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is sent to go through all of her documents and make sure they have the latest will for his law firm. He also needs to try and get the house ready to sell. He’s the low man on the totem pole, being the new, young lawyer, so he gets to deal with this boring task that requires him to spend several days separated from his son, Joseph (Misha Handley). Joseph is with the nanny (Jessica Raine) because Arthur’s wife Stella (Sophie Stuckey) died during childbirth. Since The Woman in Black is set many years ago, Arthur has to take the train there and communication is still done by telegraph. First, Arthur has an odd train ride there. He meets a man named Mr. Daily (Ciaran Hinds) who tells him that no one local will buy the Eel Marsh house. Daily is very friendly though and invites him over sometime. Daily also drops him off at the hotel, since he has the first car in town.
When Arthur gets to the hotel, they tell him that they don’t have his reservation and there is not a single room in the hotel he can have, so he will just have to leave. It is raining so hard that he really can’t leave, so he takes the room in the attic temporarily. The townspeople obviously don’t want Arthur there. The next day, he goes to caretaker of the house who tells him that he can’t go out to the house and there really is no need for him to do so. Arthur is determined to do his job properly though. When he finally finagles his way out to the house in the middle of the marsh, he finds it in a horrible state of disrepair. I really can’t believe that anyone lived there. Even beyond the age and dust, the decorations and toys are simply creepy and since the house is literally in the middle of the marsh, you know the scenery is scary. While there, Arthur looks out the windows and sees a woman standing next to a grave stone. When he goes to find her, she has simply disappeared. From this moment on, the bad things that have been happening in the town get worse and Arthur is going to have to figure out the mystery of the woman with very little help, if he is to save his own son.
The overall film was a bit of a miss for me. The toys, props, setting, etc. were all very creepy, but somehow the overall feeling of the movie was a bit lacking in true creepiness. I think maybe it is because there are several things that didn’t make sense and others that just didn’t fit. I was hoping that there would be some special features that gave some of the missing backstory or pieces, but nothing on the DVD did. The special features are interesting, but I just wanted a bit more info than they provided. The Woman in Black is a decent film that is worth watching if you catch it on TV or rent it, but I’m not sure it’s one that I would say you have to own for the perfect horror collection.
