The Woman in Black

I have been spending a good deal of my time trapped at home lately.   My adventures have been fewer and fewer and the only thing I really want to do is sleep when I have a few free minutes.  I guess that is the price you pay for having a baby.  That made it a miracle that I made it to a movie on Friday night and it was a fantastic movie.   The Woman in Black stars Daniel Radcliff as a forlorn father who lost his wife in childbirth.  He is trying to keep up with his job and his young son on his own and is quite obviously crippled by grief.  His son even notices his father's depression and all the pictures he draws of his father bare a distinct frowny face.  When the Father is forced to close up an old house and go through all of the paper work in it, the ghost story begins.   Radcliff's law firm gives him an ultimatum.  He can do a fantastic job with the paperwork or he will lose his job and thus be unable to support his son.  Trapped in a bleak house that terrifies the local villagers, Radcliff discovers old secrets and a vengeful ghost that enjoys killing children.

The Woman in Black is a very well constructed piece of Gothic ghostlore.  It uses atmosphere, foreshadowing and subtlety to ramp up the tension in the plot.   The film moves beyond creepy and becomes truly scary at times.   Daniel does a very good job with his role as a young attorney struggling to keep his sanity for his son and the supporting cast is equally as skilled.   I would definitely recommend this movie to any fan of ghost stories and hauntings.  Sadly, my viewing experience was somewhat diminished by the man seated a few rows behind me.   I believe this movie would have scared me, but as children died tragically he called out,  "That's a good way to get out of paying child support."   I suppose having your children murdered by a vengeful ghost will get you out of child support,  but it will also get you out of parenting all together.   He also managed to fart to so loud that despite the movie theater quality surround sound that literally shook the chairs, the entire theater giggled when he passed gas.   I think he probably should see a GI doctor for that.  Also, for some reason his young son sat on the other side of the theater from him (maybe because of the farting?) and every few minutes he would run in front of me with the popcorn yelling at his father and asking him if he needed more popcorn.  The long and short of it is,  The Woman in Black was probably a scary movie, but I wouldn't know it  because I couldn't stop giggling at the farting and madness of the man behind me.   Oh well, I still enjoyed the movie and I couldn't stop laughing all the way home.