Digithoughts

The Woman in Black is a throwback to old-fashioned haunted house movies, and the best one I can think of since The Others. Fresh off the Harry Potter franchise, Daniel Radcliffe is sent back to the Victorian age to star as recent widower Arthur Kipps, dispatched to a small town to work out the legal entanglements surrounding an estate whose owner recently died.

Arthur spends time in the estate’s mansion, setting out to improve the estate and sell the place, but gets caught up in chasing the "Woman in Black" who haunts the desolate house, and solving the mystery of her history.

The first half of the movie is an expert update of the traditional old spooky mansion movie – full of slowly building suspense and subtle scares that keep you on the edge of your seat: Shadows, creaking floors, porcelain dolls and windup toys all creep you out and brought screams from the audience I saw it with.  This, in fact, is the best thing about the movie – with a minimum of blood or gore or violence, The Woman in Black brings the fear.

Directed by James Watkins, the film visually pulses with lovely dark gothic look.  Towards the end, as the pieces start to come together, the movie loses traction and the plot veers into the cheesy before a weak ending. But horror film finishes are always tough, so at least the ride there is satisfyingly full of chills and thrills.

Overall, The Woman in Black is was a very successful first role for Radcliffe in his post-Harry Potter career.  Perhaps most pivotally, by picture’s (mediocre) end, I didn’t see him as Harry anymore. But, then again, even though he’s the movie’s lead, the haunted house is the star and that’s ultimately what makes it successful. ***
-- Ashley Sullivan

Chronicle is a movie to be seen in theaters, and the largest theater you can find – IMAX, if possible. It’s a picture with moments of true exhilaration that leaves you frustrated – and I mean that in the best possible way.

Three high school students – the popular one, the regular guy, and the outcast -- gain telekinetic abilities, which bring joy, then empowerment, then corruption and conflict.  The outcast often carries around a small digital film camera, and that’s how the story is primarily told – Imagine Cloverfield as a superhero origin movie. Or Blair Witch. Or Paranormal Activity 1/2/3. Or any of these other P.O.V. low budget pictures, if you’re not already sick of them.

But Chronicle isn’t as low budget as those other films, and, early on, the superhero stuff is absolutely elating – once our protagonists learn how to fly, the movie, too, takes off. The CG in the movie is top-notch and to see flight from the characters’ point of view is flat out freakin’ cool. It was these sequences that stuck with me after the movie was over, and left me frustrated – I’m never gonna fly, dammit.

Written by the Max Landis, son of director Jon Landis (Blues Brothers, American Werewolf in London), the story moves very fast – the film is less than an hour-and-a-half – but kinda loses its focus and gets more predictable as the stakes get higher. I don’t see it becoming a classic by any means (though I could certainly see it turning into a sequel/franchise), but if you’re a fan of Akira or The Tomorrow People (and 90’s Nickelodeon fans, you know who you are), Chronicle should be worth your money. ***  -- Guy Meyer

Big Miracle is a family movie about a family of whales trapped under the ice in Alaska, and Drew Barrymore’s attempts to rescue them. A communications breakdown caused us to miss the screening, but a true-ish story about the rescue of imperiled water mammals proved to be an unexpectedly successful plot device earlier this year (A Dolphin Tale), so you never know.

Digitaria Staff Co-authored Post

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