First Impressions: "Red Lights" + "The Woman in Black" (2012)

   Before I talk about this week's pair of rentals, let me explain something. On my recent trip to England, I started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on the plane. I've been pretty distracted lately, but now I want to allow myself as much time as possible to finish it. So you probably won't see any movie comments from me for a while besides the usual weekly rentals and the odd trip to the cinema.
   For the record, I'm really enjoying The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so far. The first few chapters are pretty talky, flashing back to events from the characters' past and the like. But that's fine with me, because I'm really growing to like these characters.
   Anyway…

   Rental 1: Red Lights.
   This movie has quite a promising premise. It focuses on a pair of scientists, played by Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver, who specialise in revealing the trickery behind staged paranormal activity, and now Murphy is determined to investigate Simon Silver (played by Robert De Niro), a retired stage psychic who's making a comeback. It leads you to believe that maybe – just maybe – Silver does indeed have connections to the supernatural.
   But once Murphy's investigation into Silver gets under way, the movie goes downhill, dissolving into a clichéd jump scare fest.
   And then the whole thing is ruined by a distractingly silly twist ending! The plot twist at the end makes no sense, and in fact contradicts most of what's been seen up to that point!
   Ultimately, it's just a very disappointing movie.
   My rating: 45%.

   Rental 2: The Woman in Black. Yeah, I finally got to see it! :)
   It's an old-school ghost story through-and-through, relying more on chills than most modern horror flicks. I daresay it may even have given me a whole new respect for ghost stories.
   I don't think it's really chilling enough, though. The atmosphere of isolation and nervous tension when Arthur first arrives at the house is spot-on, and the movie does boast one of the best jump scares I've ever seen. But the middle section seems to care about nothing but throwing "creepy" moments at you almost continuously. And they have no rhyme or reason, so the whole section gets boring pretty quickly. A lot of the scares were pretty predictable, too.
   But the climax makes up for all that, and I especially like the bittersweet ending.
   Overall, it was okay. I haven't read the book, but I'm sure it's a lot better.
   My rating: 65%.