The Woman in Black by James Watkins

The Woman in Black by James Watkins

There is something admirable about the PG-13 horror film. It is not allowed to be gory, crass, nasty or graphic, and that forces the filmmaker to use alternative, more subtle methods to induce scares for audiences. Scary thoughts and ideas have to be implied as opposed to physicalized. Often it takes more thought and discipline to achieve this. Joe Dante’s The Hole is one good example. I would even argue the latter Harry Potter films are essentially horror films for children as well.

Anyways, the set-up: Daniel Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer, who recently lost his wife from childbirth, travels to a remote village where he discovers the vengeful ghost of a scorned woman is terrorizing the locals.

Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success speaks about the 10,000 hour rule, the idea that mastery in any skill must involve practicing it for up till 10,000 hours. From all those years of playing Harry Potter, actor Daniel Radcliffe has proven the 10,000 hour rule with the skill of “acting to nothing.” Much of the film’s scares hang on the reactions off Radcliffe’s face, everything that the film wants the viewer to believe is present is communicated and punctuated through his performance. He has matured and refined his act into a disciplined performer than previously relying on instincts as he did on the Harry Potter films. A popular criticism that’s been circulating around is that Daniel Radcliffe is a bit young to be believable as a solicitor that has recently lost his wife. I did not mind it as it was not a conscious observation to me as I watched the film. He is a very watchable presence and carries the film competently.

Jump scares are something one can grow out of in life. It used to be the part in a horror movie I dreaded the most when I was a child and now as an adult they do not scare me at all. After all, there’s only 2 possible results to a jump scare: either the jump scare was for nothing (in which there was no point to the build-up and it’s just there to scare you to keep you unsettled for the real scares later) or for something (in which the build-up was giving away the surprise of the scare, i.e. in The Descent, there is never any build-up music/sound effects to a scare). Personally there were too many jump scares utlized in the film.  That said however, it is still a legitimate aesthetic choice because it can still prove very effective for a teen audience.

The film gave me 4-5 genuine scares. The Woman in Black‘s scarier moments come from the idea that children are vulnerable to death and danger without proper parental protection. It’s a lingering omnipresent feeling provided by the film’s gloomy gothic atmosphere. The Woman in Black is picking off all these children and the parents cannot do anything to protect them. One noteworthy scene that gave me the creeps was a child victim who dies from drinking lye. The little child helplessly collapses, spits bloods and drops dead. Nobody can do anything but watch her die. That’s pretty scary, isn’t it?

Which reminds me, to all the responsible parents out there: Please respect the film’s rating, do not take your child to see this because Daniel Radcliffe is in it. 13 is the minimum age for this movie.

I really enjoyed the ending. It was poignant and bittersweet. Although I didn’t think the very last shot was necessary (I’m not going to say what it is but people who end up watching the film can reply to me on that).

Overall, it’s a competent horror film with a fine lead performance cast in a role that plays to his strengths. It’s not great, but it is pretty good work. You can easily nitpick it to death, but I am not going to. I look forward to seeing more of Daniel Radcliffe in future films.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Tomas Alfredson

I can’t fault you for not liking this movie. It demands that you keep up with it wholeheartedly with your full undivided attention.  Once you decide to do all the work the film is asking you to do, it’s very rewarding. A blink feels like a gunshot. A facial tick becomes a car chase.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy does nothing to make it easy either. Let’s list the things: 1) Piece together the plot, which is non-linear. 2) Figuring out the spy lingo. There is no explanation for it. 3) Figuring out who’s saying what to whom and inducing if they’re lying and matching it to what they said in a previous scene. Lying is an art form in itself. Are they lying entirely? Or just omitting a detail? What motivates a lie?

This is a film that completely functions on a thematic level. Gary Oldman said in an BBC5 interview that director Tomas Alfredson doesn’t even think he made a thriller, this confirms my point. Although the film shows how real spy work is done, this is not a story about espionage at all. No, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about mistrust. It’s about these men confined in tight spaces, whose job is to constantly suspect each other, how it alienates them apart, and how being human compromises that necessity for them to survive as spies. Every character in the film battles with their own humanity to survive. There is a great scene where George Smiley (Gary Oldman’s character) flat out lies to another character with a perfect poker face and you realize how much more of a cold bastard one must be to do this job well. George Smiley is only vulnerable at home and I liked how they handled the part about his wife. She exists as an idea. She’s the deal he has to make with the devil.

Since I’m a Sherlock fan, I loved seeing Benedict Cumberbatch rise through the ranks into films now. He’s great as Gary Oldman’s younger sidekick who is still wet behind the ears. I look forward to seeing him in the next Star Trek movie. Please don’t make him play Khan. It would be a waste.

Toby Jones’ face screams red herring. He looks like an evil leprechaun and this reminds me of how Sergio Leone used to have a penchant for faces on film and how a face in itself can provoke a feeling like a landscape. I enjoy seeing a director with that level of sensitivity.

I will never just say a film has “good cinematography”, so I’ll always explain why. The film is about discovering truth amongst a cloud of lies and the cinematography really serves that idea visually. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema has managed to find layers of shadow in places that I didn’t know could exist, like the backseat of a car for instance. The camera moves, like the pan shots, really give a sense of place that constructs the moody, smoky, morally ambiguous atmosphere. See what I mean? This is a film about ideas.

Something really noteworthy is how they utilized is Gary Oldman’s glasses as a plot device. Yes, Hint! You must look at George Smiley’s glasses in every scene. It’s used like Maggie Cheung’s dresses in In The Mood For Love. What’s genius about is it forces you to look at Gary Oldman’s eyes, and creates that tension of asking what’s going on underneath the dialogue.

Hands down, Gary Oldman should win the Oscar. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. How does one underplay and still manage to be that engaging? Due to the Academy’s usual taste of rewarding showy loud performances, it looks unlikely. It’s a performance completely constructed around what he’s not showing and what he is not saying. But at least they recognized it. It’s a step, right?