From Hell Review

From Hell (2001)


As adaptations go the Hughes brothers set themselves up for a huge task by taking on Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's phone book of a comic about Jack the Ripper. There was no way that a 2 hour film could coherently cover all of the points that Moore did (these include architecture as a spell and the sexual and social morals of the era) so the film concentrates on more of a whodunit approach whereas the book told you within the first 30 odd pages who the Ripper was.



On a story level this is fair enough but shoe horning in a relationship between Johnny Depp's character of Inspector Abberline and Heather Graham's Mary Kelly is an error, it's totally unneeded in the context of the film. That said they're of totally different genetic stock to everyone else in the film so who can blame them for gravitating to each other?



Depp and Robbie Coltraine are fine as the 2 policemen trying to track down the Ripper although Depps cockney accent does veer a little too close into Dick Van Dyke territory now and again. It's a lot more successful than Heather Grahams though, she just doesn't work as a 19th century prostitute, you have to wonder what went on in that casting session if she was the best the film makers could come up with.



The other notable performance comes from Ian Holm as William Gull (the Queens physician at the time), you know he'll always do a good job no matter what he's in but he's extra creepy in this.



Visually the film has some nice touches such as Abberlines hallucinations and CGI additions to the practical sets to extend the scope of the films version of London without relying on the standby of adding lots and lots of fog.



While not a success as an adaptation of its source material this is a fair addition to the Ripper library. One thing I will say is that the first time I saw this I fell asleep during the last 10 minutes and thought a character had died and that when you see them at the very end of the film it was a final hallucination for Abberline. When I watched it again I realised this wasn't the case, stupid films with their inserting happy endings into my death, destruction and despair…