After coming hot off the heels of just finishing the novel, is the review of
the movie of the same name; but it’s definitely not the same story.
Short nitty-gritty plot description from IMDb is as follows: A young
lawyer travels to a remote village where he discovers the vengeful ghost of a
scorned woman is terrorizing the locals.
This is a difficult one to review. On one hand, I enjoyed the film, but
on the other hand, it changed so much from the novel that the overall idea
of the story became something generic. And you can’t spell Hollywood without
generic.
Okay, first the good points: The atmosphere and productions values for
this film are great, nothing is wrong there. A beautiful Gothic town with
a dark mystery, brooding mansion and a mysterious woman in black. It’s pretty much how I imagined the town, island and mansion would
look like while reading the novel. Bravo Hollywood on doing that! Daniel
Radcliffe does a great job as Arthur Kipps, no complaints from me on
that. There isn’t a whole lot of talking in this film, so you have to rely
on body language and Daniel pulls it off. Also, while I normally hate jump scares, there are some nice ones in this film and trust me, you’ll be laughing at yourself
after you jump a foot off your chair. A stellar example of a creepy scene in the film, involves a sleeping Kipp and a slowly opening door in the background. It’s goosebump inducing. You’ll know what I mean when you see the film.
Okay, now the bad stuff: The changes, oh god the changes! The
ending has been changed considerably and I guess you could say it’s a happier
ending. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I can tell you one thing, it’s
nothing like the book. Also, I didn’t like how they gave away most of the
plot points within the first 20 minutes of the film, while in the book one of the major plot points
isn’t revealed till the very end. Because they give away the major plot points at the start of the film, you can pretty much figure
out exactly what’s going to happen throughout the rest of film.
Conclusion time! As you can see, I listed more positives than negatives in my review, so… I have to say it’s a recommend! If you didn’t read the
book, the movie will definitely be enjoyable and scary. If you did read
the book, it might let you down a little. Still, I recommend giving it a
watch for a good scare and to see the novel’s settings come to life on the big/little screen.
Rating:
