While filming The Women in Black (in theaters this Friday), Daniel Radcliffe was puzzled by one aspect of the story. Why does his character, Arthur Kipps, stay in a creepy, desolate, almost certainly haunted house when he could be spending his nights elsewhere?

“One of the first questions I asked James was, ‘Why does [Arthur] stay there?’ The moment you read the first page [of the script], you know it’s going to end badly. Get out of there, idiot,” Radcliffe said in an interview with Screen Rant.

It’s a question one could ask about any flick with a paranormal theme. Why do the characters stick around? The obvious answer, of course, is storyline. If the characters in a horror flick just got up and left when things got weird there would be no horror movie. Still, good movies feature believable characters and plausible situations, a feat The Woman in Black attempts to pull off by depicting Radcliffe’s character as man with a personal interest in life after death.

“Well, here’s a young man who has lost his wife and he goes to this house and he suddenly starts seeing the – what he thinks is – the ghost of a dead woman,” Radcliffe quotes director James Watkins as saying. “To have any kind of confirmation that that is what he is seeing would mean that he would be able to confirm the fact that there is an afterlife which means he will perhaps one day see his wife again. So he’s staying there for some kind of sense of conciliation, I suppose.”

Based on a 1989 TV film, which is itself based on a popular novel and play, The Woman in Black is the tale of a young lawyer (Radcliffe) who travels to a lonely, marsh estate only to encounter the spirit of a vengeful ghost. Ciarán Hinds, Janet McTeer, and Liz White also star in film. Check out the trailer below.

I already have plans to see this movie tomorrow night. I’ll let you know what I think on Monday and if any person in their right mind would stick around in that lonely, marsh estate.

Source: ScreenRant via Christian Science Monitor