The Small Hand

It was just old-fashioned spooky creepy, with jump-moments. It was faithful to Susan Hill's tone and more akin to a modern-dress M.R.James. Fans of severed heads and gore should go elsewhere.

Sure it's not The Shining or anything like that but the story is decent. It does run a bit long however. We liked it enough to give it an 8 and were extremely surprised to see the 4.4 rating afterwards.

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.

Dark, melancholy and too long.

Nice cast - it wasn't their fault. But I guessed there would be yet another doomed child at the end. And getting there was a rather tortured journey.

More sad and plodding than scary.

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