The belief in supernatural phenomena is a a double-edged weapon. On the one hand every person who supposes there is a place for supernatural in our life is made to accept each event of his life as the providence of punishment, in some other cases as the influence of the unknown power. Moreover he is ready to face the possible misfortunes and prepare the unbelievable explanations for them.
Those who don't believe in miraculous powers have nothing but breaking their heads and stick to logical approach to every moment in their life. But the logic is not the basic law of the universe. The blind faith and the principal denial are the two frightening extremes. The superstitious beliefs give birth of fear and the fear is typical of everyone no matter if he is a religious fanatic or reasonable scientist.
The English writer Susan Hill who is the author of the dark Gothic novels has created the novel "The Woman in Black" in 1983. The novel soon became popular and later was used a a basis for a play which was on in the Scarboro theater.
A year later the play was performed in West End in London. Nowadays it is considered to be one of the most long playing scenario in the London theater "Fortune". The cinema makers took interest in this play in the late 80s. The TV version of the novel is very close to the original one but it didn't gain that overwhelming popularity. 20 years later the movie makers decided to show the terror and fear of this story to the viewers.
In 2012 the film producer James Watkins decided to remake the old version and offer his viewers the modern variant of "The Woman in Black".
The main magnet for the audience is the name of Daniel Radcliffe on the billboards and posters. The young British actor who will probably be associated with Harry potter for a long time has received the first profound part that is not connected with the creations of Joanne Rowling. Everybody was interested in the potential of the young actor who couldn't get rid of the image of the four-eyed wizard boy and move to another stage of his job.
The authors of the film scenario didn't manage to avoid the cliches that are connected with the Edwardian horror stories. The awful story of the past, the haunted house and the dead children don't even look frightening.
Still the producers of “The Woman in Black” didn't manage to resist the enticement to adapt the plot of the story to make the main character performed by Daniel Radcliffe take active part in the pot development instead of simple watching. The family tragedy pushes the young man to start searching for the elusive happiness beyond the real world. That makes him weak and strong at one and the same time.
In fact "The Woman in Black" is not that creepy as it may seem to be at the first sight. All this scheme of wandering about the dark corridors is quite familiar to the modern viewer.
The film makers and producers are glad with the box office the film has earned but the viewers seem to be disappointed.