Daniel Radcliffe and the chamber of secrets

Not since young Hutter arrived at Orloks castle in Nosferatu has a journey to a dreaded house been more fearsome than the one in The Woman in Black.

Both films (and all versions of Dracula) begin with the local townspeople terrified of a residence and the legends surrounding it. In this case, a green young attorney named Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is visiting a haunted house in the north of England, which can be reached only by a single-track road on a long, narrow causeway that lies so low in a brackish sea that the waters lap its edges.

Arthurs mission is to search a decrepit Gothic mansion for the papers of its late occupant. This woman is said to haunt the house in mourning for her dead child. Local legend has it that the ghost is responsible for the deaths of other local children, brought about in rage as her form of vengeance. No wonder, then, that the locals shun Arthur, refuse him room and board, and strongly suggest he take the next train back to town.

But Arthur must succeed because his job depends on it. His work at a firm of solicitors has been unsatisfactory, and he needs to support his son, Joseph (Misha Handley), because his wife died four years ago in childbirth. As in the Dracula legends, the carriage driver refuses to take him close to the mansion, but a stalwart resident named Daily (Ciaran Hinds, he of the portentous face) drives him there in his new motor car.

The house is a masterpiece of production design, crumbling, forlorn, filled with the faded and jumbled Victorian possessions of doomed lifetimes. It has a unique feature audiences will not fail to remark upon: its own sound effects crew. At every frightening moment, and there are many, the sound track paralyzes us with blasts of cacophonous noise. You wouldnt want to be in the theatre next to this movie in a multiplex.

The Woman in Black is Daniel Radcliffes first film since last years Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. With a few other diversions, the Potter series kept him! working steadily for a decade, during which he has grown taller and sprouted a crop of sideburns, but at 22 still looks like a schoolboy or a little young, anyway, to be the father of a 4-year-old. Nor does he have much gravitas. The film might have had more effect if his character had possessed more screen presence, but The Woman in Black depends mostly on the decor, location and supporting cast, some of them playing living people and some not.

The movie nevertheless is effective because director James Watkins knows it isnt a character study. His haunted house is the star. The illnesses of local children provide ominous portents. Dailys wife (Janet McTeer) balances precariously on the edge of madness. And there is a most satisfactory scene at a railroad station that might have had Radcliffe wondering if he will ever in his career take a routine rail journey.

The Ebert Company

Woman in Black

Three stars/Four stars

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Misha Handley, Roger Allam, Ciaran Hinds, Janet McTeer, Shaun Dooley, Mary Stockley, Tim McMullan, Liz White, Ashley Foster, Sophie Stuckey

Directed by: James Watkins

Playing at: SilverCity Ancaster, Jackson Square Hamilton, SilverCity Burlington, SilverCity Oakville

Rated: 14A