The Small Hand

The lack of suspense in this was mind boggling. Douglas Henshall is a good actor but he was wasted here. The ghost itself had zero fear factor. I don't think the director has ever watched an effective ghost story adaptation. The Uninvited (1944), The Haunting (1963), The Changeling (1980), The Woman in Black (1989 and 2012), and The Conjuring (2013) all got it right; don't show too much too soon (in the case of The Haunting, don't show anything at all)! Let the imagination do the work! This... didn't do that. I own the original story, and it is way, way better than this. A huge letdown.

I really did want the majority of reviews to be wrong, as I am a fan of the story, and also a fan of lead actor Douglas Henshall. Unfortunately, the majority are spot on. By nature, the title encourages the viewer to believe this is going to be a little scary, and whilst it is a Ghost Story, it lacks on the scares. As a production it feels clunky, and somewhat disjointed, the appearances of the Ghosts are heavy handed, subtlety initially would have worked very well. The acting is fine, Henshall is very good, a cut above. It is very slow to start, and pretty slow until the last fifteen minutes, which I really enjoyed. There's no denying it's a great story, I fear it wasn't used to its full potential here. 5/10

This is a surprisingly flat adaption of the Susan Hill story, in which the sweeping locations come first, most of the acting comes a distant second and sadly, the plot doesn't really get past the starting block.

It's very difficult to engage with the characters. There's not much to them, and the playing is often stilted. The scares are occasionally effective, but when the manifest 'ghost' is a very physical being - and an irritating bully rather than a demonic spirit to boot - there's nothing to elicit the mildest chill.

What a shame this is, when the mood sets us up for grand things - slow, lingering camera work, a minimalist, darkly ambient score and a stunning location. Effective dressing, but barely anything to hang them on. Only Neve McIntosh puts in a committed performance. My score is 4 out of 10.

I loved the Woman in Black also by Susan Hill so i was looking forward to this, how disappointed i was. Very dull, no suspense and not scary at all. Terrible

Poor writing, acting and directing. The pace is slow from the outset and doesn't improve from there. No suspense is built and has you struggling to invest yourself in this. A few scenes are laughable and have you wanting to turn off before the halfway marker. You won't care about the characters, you won't care about the story. Channel 5 built plenty of hype, more anticipation than the entire movie could produce. A movie so poor I would never want to read the book