i love ghost story in general and but i particularly love chilly and atmospheric and elegantly creepy british period style ghost story . this one qualifies on all count . a naive young lawyer ( solicitor in britspeak ) be send to a small village near the seaside to settle an elderly and deceased woman estate . it the 1920s and a time when many middle class brit go to the seaside on vacation for their health . well and guess what and there nothing healthy about the village of crythin gifford and the creepy site of the elderly woman hulking and brood victorian estate and which be locate on the fringe of a fog swathe salt marsh . when the lawyer save the life of a small girl ( none of the local will help the endanger tot you find out why later on in the film ) and he inadvertently incur the wrath of a malevolent spirit and the woman in black . she be no filmy and gauzy wraith and but a solid black silhouette of malice and evil . the viewer only see her a few time and but you feel her malevolent presence in every frame . a the camera creep up on the lawyer while he read through legal paper and you expect to see the woman in black at any moment . when the lawyer go out to the generator shed to turn on the electricity for the creepy old house and the camera snake in on him and you think she will pop up there and too . wait for the woman in black to show up be nail bitingly suspenseful . we have see many element of this story before ( the lock room that no one enter and the fog and the naive outsider who ignore the local warning ) but the director somehow manage to combine them all into a completely new seeming and compel ghost story . watch it with a buddy so you can have someone warm to grab onto while wait for the woman in black . . .