4 years after his wife died during childbirth, struggling lawyer Arthur Kips (Daniel Radcliffe) is sent to a small remote town to obtain the paperwork that his company may settle an estate by selling a large manor house.
Upon arrival, the locals are obviously not keen to have Arthur around but, despite every on stick the townsfolk throw at him, Arthur is determined to do his job in time for his son and his nanny to join him for a break in the country.
Upon arrival at the Manor, it is clear that something is amiss, and it becomes quickly apparent that the house is haunted...
This was Radcliffe's first major roll outside of the Harry Potter films, and he had a lot to prove, and prove it he did; Harry Potter was no fluke: he genuinely cannot act!
Radcliffe aside, this was the first 'real' Hammer movie since the companies resurrection (following a MySpace exclusive, an American film and 2 remakes), and it makes sense that they would go for the kind of old-school period piece that made the company famous in the first place.
Sadly, it's 'old school' to a fault; playing entirely too slow for a modern audience, after almost an hour and a half a 'race against time' element is introduced (Kipps must do something before his son arrives, and there is no way of contacting the nanny to not bring him on the planned train), but 10 minutes later, the problem is solved - this should have been the entire second act of the movie, but instead we had Kipps reading in the dark while clockwork toys occasionally spring to life!
The haunting's explanation is interesting enough, but takes entirely too long to arrive, and is rushed once it does.
I'll not ruin the ending, but it did feel like the message they were sending was a bit... odd; if you find yourself asking "wait... So are they saying that [spoiler] is better off [spoiler]", you aren't alone.
The movie was successful enough that a sequel is in the works, but I can't help but wonder how much of that success was down to adult Harry Potter fans (who, almost inexplicably, are legion).
Not a total failure, and worth a watch if you don't mind slower paced ghost stories, but it could have been so much better had the pacing been reworked.
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