Photo courtesy MCT

Who could forget the four words that defined our generation: “You’re a wizard, Harry”? Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who played the infamous “boy who lived” in the eight-part movie franchise based on the book by J.K. Rowling has since moved on to more mature roles.But can he ever shake his Harry Potter image?

This weekend was the moment for truth for Harry Po – I mean, Daniel Radcliffe – as he took one more step away from Harry Potter (and Broadway) and tried his hand at a period piece horror film by director James Watkins, titled, The Woman in Black.

Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, a widower with a 4-year-old son who sets off to a remote village to settle a deceased woman’s paperwork only to find himself face to face with a vengeful spirit. Haunted houses, evil ghosts… and the Hogwarts Express(?), this movie is a step in a very creepy direction out of the Harry Potter canon (for the most part).

Despite the many roles that Radcliffe has played since he started off as Harry Potter, some students (myself included) have a hard time seeing him as anything but the boy wizard with the scar on his forehead.

Katie Claburn, a fourth-year sociology major, is going to try to keep an open mind as she watches The Woman in Black. “It still looks good and I’ll probably try to look outside of Harry Potter, but it’s so hard because it’s the first thing I saw him in and I saw him in it once a year from then,” said Claburn.

Others, like Nina Nguyen, a fourth-year Asian American studies major and biology minor, think that Radcliffe has the potential to move away from being “Potter.” While discussing Radcliffe’s Broadway roles, Nguyen said, “At first I looked at him as being Harry Potter, but as he plays into his role, you can see him fully in that role and you don’t see Harry Potter anymore.”

Was Radcliffe brave in jumping to the horror genre right after Harry Potter? Arya Zarafi, a second-year radio-TV-film major, said, “I think The Woman in Black does not come anywhere near to the caliber of the bravery of coming away from the Harry Potter franchise as Equus did.”

Equus is a Broadway show in which Radcliffe bared it all for a live audience, and proceeded to – well lets just say have happy times on a horse.

So did I see Harry Potter, or Daniel Radcliffe in The Woman in Black? Well, I must admit that during the parts where my eyes were open, Radcliffe seemed to have proven himself as a rather good horror genre actor.

I found myself searching for Harry Potter to help ease the fear I felt from that actual film (yes, it’s a horror movie that’s actually scary).

So for the actual movie, it’s a good haunted house movie. The cinematography was good, the acting in the beginning was a little bit too Broadway (but I’ll forgive Dan for that one); however towards the end, Radcliffe’s performance was not only believable, but captivating.

I look forward to Daniel Radcliffe’s career as an actor outside of Harry Potter, even if it means watching a naked horse movie in the future (Equus: The Movie anybody?).