• “The Woman in Black,” directed by James Watkins, Hammer Films,
95 minutes, released Feb. 3

Reminiscent of the classic horror films of Hollywood’s golden era — when the production code prohibited gratuitous violence, and moviemakers relied on the harrowing nature of the unseen and imagined — “The Woman in Black” is refreshing. Created by Hammer Film Productions (the popular production company from the 1950s and 1960s), the film expertly relies on that most powerful medium of horror: What the human mind can conjure.

If you have any affinity for haunted houses and classic ghost tales of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, this moody film won’t disappoint. Teenagers will doubtless flock to the theaters on Daniel Radcliffe’s star power alone. (Radcliffe played the title character in the Harry Potter film series). But there is much to enjoy here independent of the cast.

In a role that stretches him well beyond his 22 years, Radcliffe stars as Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer and grief-stricken widower whose wife passed away in childbirth. His lone remaining joy in life is his 4-year old son, a relationship ultimately threatened by the film’s namesake, the woman in black.

At the beginning of the story, Kipps is assigned to order the estate of Alice Drablow, a recently deceased widow who owned Eel Marsh House on the northeast coast of England. Drabow lived there with her husband, her son, and her sister, Jennet Humfrye.

Kipps soon discovers that all is not right in a nearby village. The adults are paranoid because their young children have been committing suicide in various tragic ways. The villagers blame the vengeful ghost of Jennet, who is enraged because something very precious was taken from her before she died. She is bent on inflicting the same type of pain on other parents.

Kipps dismisses the villagers’ concerns until he begins experiencing direct encounters with the woman in black herself. His only ally in the village is Sam Daily, a role that is a perfect fit for the long-faced, ominous-looking Irish actor Ciaran Hinds. Daily is at first disbelieving of the woman in black until Kipps convinces him to help in putting things right.

The film’s location is a treat. The haunted dwelling, Eel Marsh House, is on an island by night because high tide erases the causeway leading to it. The grounds are a tangled mass of looming trees and overgrown shrubbery, shrouded in mist. Inside the house, each room drips with creepiness. Boredom could set in easily for the viewer, given the amount of screentime that director James Watkins devotes to simply following Radcliffe as he walks around the house. But it never does.

Nineteenth-century kids’ toys are innately creepy, and the director uses that reality to chilling effect. Much of the film is the stuff of children’s ghost stories: Rocking chairs that rock by themselves, spectral shapes faintly seen in mirrors or on the periphery of the screen, doors that open and close without natural reason, stairways that shouldn’t creak but do, and ghostly handprints on windows.

There is very little blood, no gore, and no inappropriate language or sexual content. But the film is thick with tension, and jump scenes abound. That, mixed with the constant spectral presence, makes it a chorus of chills not for the faint of heart.

Like most ghost stories, the film presents a muddled picture of spirituality and the afterlife. Kipps’ deceased wife is seen several times as an angel-like being, so the viewer assumes that she won the afterlife lottery. The woman in black, on the other hand, wanders the estate — along with the innocent children she prompted to suicide. That said, few of us go to ghost movies expecting realism, so willing suspension of disbelief isn’t too hard.

There is no tidy ending, making the film a poor fit for some viewers, and the plot isn’t original. But “The Woman in Black” is a spook fest in the vein of the best creepy thrillers of the black-and-white era. I was glad I wasn’t alone in the theater.