HAVING bid adieu to his days at Hogwarts, Daniel Radcliffe takes on his first ‘grown-up’ cinema role in Hammer Film Productions’ The Woman in Black, showing at Cineworld St Helens.

Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a recently-widowed lawyer who travels to a remote village to settle the estate of the recently-deceased owner of Eel Marsh House.

The house is horror-by-numbers spooky, so it’s no surprise when he spies a figure in black lurking in the grounds.

Arthur is informed by locals of the tortured spectre who avenges the loss of her son by taking the lives of local children in particularly disturbing ways, and now that she has appeared it is an omen that more deaths are on their way.

With a gloomy Edwardian setting and the director’s use of shadows and music, (not to mention a room full of incredibly creepy children’s toys) an unrelenting atmosphere of menace is created, and the film succeeds in providing genuine scares without being dependent on blood and gore.

This compensates for a somewhat threadbare storyline lacking depth.

Another problem is the weak characterisation of Arthur; we don’t know much about him, and as a result the motivations behind his behaviour lacks clarity.

Kipps appears to be less like the intended brooding and mysterious lead, and more a two-dimensional figure with whom it is at times difficult to empathise.

In spite of some shortcomings, overall The Woman in Black is a chilling ghost tale packed with jumpy bits.

There are so many that you constantly find yourself on tenterhooks in anticipation of the next – so don’t be fooled by the 12A certificate, this is a seriously scary film.

We have a pair of tickets plus The Woman in Black goodies to be won.

Answer the following question – what is the name of the spooky house featured in the The Woman in Black?

Send your answer, with a daytime phone number, to The Woman in Black, St Helens Star, 23a Hardshaw Street, St Helens, to arrive by Friday, February 24. The winner will be notified.