Because Everybody Else Has One

Before I start rolling out reviews for this fairly packed week, I just realised that I forgot to post my thoughts on The Woman in Black, which came out a couple of weeks ago. This is especially shameful since I've read the book on which it is based and everything! Ah well, better late than never, I suppose. With Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard reinventing the horror genre on one side and endless English-language remakes of European and Asian horror cinema on the other, there is something to be said for so traditional - and decidedly British - a ghost story as The Woman In Black. Very loosely based on the 1982 Susan Hill novel of the same name, The Woman in Black finds Daniel Radcliffe as a young widower, a single father and a lawyer not very good at his job who travels to an eerie rural town to consolidate the estate of an old woman who lived alone in a secluded old house, cut off from society by rising tides and wet marshland. It's not long however, before he finds that thi...

But first, the one film from last week that I haven't reviewed yet - at least of those I've seen. Dream House is something of an oddity of a film in that it's a psychological drama that plays out like a ghost story. Sadly, though it's probably better than most reviewers suggest, it doesn't entirely work on either level. It's efficiently put together and, considering it boats always solid thesps like Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts, it's obviously well acted. It's just that, for a ghost story, its decidedly uncreepy and, for a psychological drama, it's surprisingly inert. All this, despite the grizzly murder that is the backbone of the film, as well as the big twist in the middle of the film that, though obvious in hindsight, actually managed to take me by surprise. If you're going to see it, try and go in with low expectations and as little knowledge about the film as possible (hope I helped!) but there's little reason not to w...