Daniel Radcliffe has taken on some of Hollywood’s strangest roles since he played Harry Potter, from horror to action to surreal dramas and comedies. On Sunday night, a movie that features one of the strangest of those performances airs on TV — The Woman in Black. The 2012 oddball horror airs on Flix at 10:35 p.m. ET.
The Woman in Black came out one year after the final Harry Potter movie, at a time when many fans still hadn’t made sense of Radcliffe’s new career moves. The actor himself had already been working to branch out and redefine himself, and this movie helped the general public see that. It is based on a novel of the same name published by Susan Hill in 1983, about a recently widowed lawyer named Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) in early-20th century England. He travels to a remote village where he finds a whole town terrorized by “the vengeful ghost of a scorned woman.”
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The movie got generally positive reviews immediately after its release, with an extra helping of media attention thanks to Radcliffe’s participation. Rotten Tomatoes currently shows a 67 percent rating among critics but only a 54 percent audience score for the movie. Its critical consensus reads: “Traditional to a fault, The Woman in Black forwent gore for chills — although it may not provide enough of them for viewers attuned to modern, high-stakes horror.”
Considering it was Radcliffe’s first role after Harry Potter, it struck many fans as an odd choice at the time. It took a few more movies for fans to realize that Radcliffe was intentionally reaching for parts that were as different as possible from “the boy who lived,” looking to display his range and prove that he was more than a child star.
Over the last decade, he has had hits and misses, but there is no denying that he succeeded in separating himself from the franchise that made him famous. His movies since then have included playing Allen Ginsburg in the movie Kill Your Darlings, playing Igor in a 2015 adaptation called Victor Frankenstein, and even playing a talking corpse named Manny in the 2016 indie darling Swiss Army Man.
Throughout all of this, Radcliffe has never impugned the Harry Potter franchise, simply sought to separate his legacy from it. In a 2011 interview with Total Film he said he is “proud to be associated with this film series forever,” and in another with Time Out, he said: “I’ve been given a much better perspective on life by doing Potter.”
Many fans grew up and expanded their tastes alongside Radcliffe, and hopefully, more will continue to do so. For those interested, The Woman in Black is airing on Sunday, March 7 at 10:35 p.m. Et on Flix. The movie is also available to stream any time on Showtime.
