"The Woman in Black" (2012) is one of those sort-of-horror movies that I find more suspenseful and creepy than scary, with a few chills thrown in here and there. I watched this the other night--by myself, even though the tagline says "don't watch it alone"--and I did enjoy it, although it definitely was not that scary to me.
   The story revolved around an old house, Eel Marsh, in a remote village in England that is basically being haunted. Daniel Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a young, widowed lawyer with a young son. Kipps is sent to this house by his law firm to settle the estate of its last occupant, and of course, runs right into the whole haunted mess. He realizes that there is a secret in the village, no one wants to speak of it, and that there is someone in the house searching for something, but what? Who is it and what are they after?
   The movie has a fine Gothic atmosphere, great spooky sets, very evocative of old time horror movies, but the scares were very few, mostly involving loud noises. Once Arthur realizes something is wrong here and becomes involved in discovering the truth, it really does become more a suspense/thriller type of story with the audience wondering when he will finally piece things together and what the truth will turn out to be when it's revealed. Yes, there are deaths of children, lots of screams and wails and other noises, strange movements and shadows, scenes in graveyards, a local woman who has bizarre medium-like fits, a barking dog, and so forth, all of which add to the atmosphere of general unsettling creepiness and are in some cases disturbing, but not genuinely scary.
   The flick moved along at a decent pace, and I was interested in finding out the real story, but I did at times get impatient with Arthur at not being quite bright enough to figure things out quickly enough. With help from a local man who had lost his own son once to the woman in black, Arthur finally makes connections, discovers the truth, and tries to rectify the situation. Alas, even though he valiantly attempts to make things right, the end result has disastrous consequences. It was interesting to see Daniel Radcliffe in more of an adult role after all his success with the "Harry Potter" movies, and he does a commendable job with his part.
   This film reminded me of movies like the 1963 version of "The Haunting,""The Innocents," and "The Others."