10 Movies One Mistake Away From Being Masterpieces
4. The Woman In Black
The Almost Great Movie: Daniel Radcliffe had a hard job after Harry Potter ended. If he was to continue acting, something he has admitted does not come naturally to him, he needed to make a big post-Hogwarts impression that threw the boy wizard from everyone's mind. Taking on the role of a widowed single father, he leapt into the big screen adaptation of The Woman In Black, a novel that had already seen major success on the West End. And while it didn't quite match the heights of that two-man show, it was certainly a scary watch.
The Big Mistake: It tries too hard to make you jump.
In the UK, distributor Momentum Pictures were desperate to get a 12A rating so they could cash in on the lucrative young teen market. I'm fairly certain this is where this problem originates. Whenever the titular ghost appears on screen, rather than the creeping horror the play instills, we're met with an attempt at a jump scare, with a loud note playing at her appearance. Moments like this, along with false jumps (which show up more than once here), are incredibly common in low quality horror, but feel out of place in something so otherwise assured as this.
The thing is, in making the audience jump, the tension is lessened, making the threat less prolonged and thus the film a fraction as scary as it could have been.