The Woman in Black: whilst figuring out a reclusive widow’s estate, a young lawyer  awakens a nasty ghost that terrorises the local town. Everything is inherently creepy; it’s a timeframe that we associate with ghosts, the setting is the classic cut-off haunted house, crazy weather, and there’s just something uneasy about staring/possessed/haunted children. It’s well-ececuted with lots of suspense and randomly placed big/noisy jumps; nothing groundbreaking, but very effective. Despite being a tad young, Radcliffe – and his sideburns – do well given there’s a lot of non-speaking sections, and Hinds truly lights up the scenes he’s in. The woman herself is better when not seen, and after the dig-up, the film loses its old-skool fear as the ghost’s behaviour becomes more ‘modern horror’. Being a pansy, for a film rated 12A, this had me in knots all over the place with some truly unbearable moments – it’s definitely not for kids. All characters also suffer from classic horror tropes; why go chasing ghosts, why go back to the house, why dot the townspeople refuse to re-locate? But these are probably better unanswered. Like Hammer itself, The Woman in Black is it’s a classic genre picture, very british, and good to see back on the silver screen.

Score: 6.5/10