In all honesty, the last time I saw a horror movie that made me scream and jump out of my seat was when I saw “The Ring” nine years ago. Since then, the search for finding an even better scare was on, and during the course of that time, I always seemed to fail.

After I saw the trailer for “The Woman in Black,” I was excited because it was supposed to be a scary movie, but I was intrigued more because of the actuality  that it was Daniel Radcliffe‘s first movie since “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2.” I wanted to see if he would succeed in playing the role of a character that wasn’t of a wizard in glasses.

“The Woman in Black” takes place in a small English town during the Victorian time period. A widower and lawyer named Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), visits the town in hopes of finding the papers of a deceased woman in her haunted house. He discovers that the lady who once lived in the house mourned the death of her young son and she wants to seek revenge by taking the lives of other children.

Slowly, many of the children in the town started to die. The superstitious people of the town start to blame Kipps and he begins to worry about his son, Joseph (Misha Handley), back home. Kipps fears that his son will also be taken away from him and tries to stop the lady from getting to all the children. Close to the end, he decides to help the woman overcome her horrible tendency by trying to reunite her son’s corpse with hers, but he still isn’t sure if that is what she wants.

Daniel Radcliffe’s performance definitely made me forget the “Harry Potter” character he used to play. The actor has matured and has achieved taking on a more serious role. His performance as Arthur Kipps made him give the impression that he was a lot older than what he really is cut out to be. He knows how to capture the hearts of people that aren’t just fans of the popular wizard series and he really needs to be recognized for his impressive rendition of his portrayal in “The Lady in Black”.

The young British director, James Watkins (“Eden Lake”), produced the movie in a very professional way. It wasn’t evident that his directing and producing background is very small and almost unknown to the entertainment business of the U.S. The scenery and special effects of the movie were probably the reason for the endless spine-chilling and blood-curdling screams of the audience . The house was desolate and immense. Its interior was elaborate and fundamental to the most thrilling scenes in the movie. One of the rooms in the house had some of the scariest toys I’ve ever seen. The music and unexpected appearances of the Lady in Black’s silhouette was definitely the focal point of the movie.

Lately, horror movies have been following that trend where they make their trailers appear to be so much scarier than the actual movie. “The Woman in Black” doesn’t follow that trend. After watching it in the dark theater, I regretted going on my hunt to find a good horror movie. I couldn’t get rid of scary image of the woman’s silhouette in my head for many nights, and it gave me a reason to be sleep deprived for possibly the rest of the month.

The running time is 95 minutes and is rated PG-13 for thematic material and violence/disturbing images.