Mandais Reviews

The Woman in Black (2012)

Wasted Potential

[6/10 · 8 September 2013]

Overall I had a hard time fully enjoying The Woman in Black. Its atmosphere is fantastic, its set design and cinematography are lovely, the acting is solid, but the experience is brought down by few major flaws. Among them being a fairly well-tread story and some disappointing shots.

To start, what The Woman in Black does extremely well is immersing you completely in its deliciously drab universe. The old mansion where Daniel Radcliffe's Arthur Kipps spends the majority of the film is dressed expertly with creepy antiques and a large helping of cobwebs and dust. The way the house is filmed as well serves to bring it to life in a big way.

However, the life is taken right out of it when every single suspenseful shot and every spooky sequence is ended with an entirely predictable jump scare. When you know exactly what (and when) something is coming for you, there's not much left to really scare you. Moments of very clunky and expository dialogue can take you out of the experience as well.

So I guess if you're in the mood for a beautifully filmed ghost movie, give The Woman in Black a try. Just don't go in expecting anything ground breaking or particularly scary.

Now You See Me (I) (2013)

Missing the Magic

[6/10 · 5 September 2013]

Now You See Me is the sort of movie that relies entirely on spectacle and style without much of anything underneath the surface. The plot centers around a band of Robin Hood-esque illusionists with an affinity for robbing banks and the team of FBI agents tasked with bringing them down.

We are first introduced to our protagonists, a group eventually called The Four Horsemen, through a look at each of their individual acts. The movie fails, however, to develop any of them beyond these lifeless, cardboard cut-outs. The same is true for the rest of the cast as well. There's a pair of bumbling FBI agents, a washed up magician aiding the feds, and the Horsemen's benefactor who are never given enough depth to make for really compelling characters.

This movie does contain some relatively cool tricks, but some are a bit too grand to be believable. One in particular involving Isla Fisher floating above a crowd in a giant bubble is a tad ridiculous. All that being said, it's entertaining enough to pull you along for the ride and it can be a pretty darn fun ride at times as long as you don't look too closely.