12 Movies That Were Ruined By One Dumb Decision

10. Casting Daniel Radcliffe - The Woman In Black

Daniel Radcliffe gave a pretty damn fine performance in The Woman In Black. After we'd spent ten years getting used to him as a boy wizard, he suddenly appeared on screen a disheveled, widowed single father, yet we fully bought into it. He was a solid, relatable presence that fit the role of haunted victim very well.

But his casting hurt the film to such an extent that the finished product would have been much scarier without him. Being so intrinsically linked with Harry Potter meant Radcliffe brought with him a new audience that a ghost story a Hammer production wouldn't normally have; teenagers and even younger. So naturally the studio were keen to get them in, leading to a film that by all reasoning should have been an R/15 toned down to become a PG-13/12A. Some region specific changes needed to be made to the film in the UK to manage that, with the image darkened and six seconds cut, but even before that the movie was compromised.

The stage version (and Susan Hill's original novel) both had a prolonged sense of terror, but James Watkins' film, obviously unable to do that lest the kiddies get too scared, threw in numerous jump scares to turn a night in Eel Marsh House into a momentarily startling, but mostly unaffecting experience; imagine the second act without a jolt every time the woman appears.