At Home with John and Debbie

With the end of Debbie’s marking finally in sight, we made some time to watch From Hell, a Jack the Ripper film with a twist, last night on TiVo. There were a number of reasons I wanted to see this film:

• It’s yet another film adaptation of a graphic novel by Alan Moore, and yet another one he’s reportedly not pleased with
• Of the graphic novel, I have seen but one frame; in a review long long ago. It made an impression though: it showed two Victorian policemen astonished at the discovery that their crime scenes’ locations formed a pentagram. I sensed an atmosphere of creeping supernatural dread, and I wanted in!
• It is a period piece set in Victorian London, directed by the Hughes Brothers, previously known for Menace II Society, set in their own contemporary LA

What we got was a curate’s egg. The depiction of 19th century London is well done, with numerous recognisable skylines panning into squalid, filthy cobbled streets. The gaggle of prostitutes at risk are a bit Carry On Jack the Ripper, but then by necessity they had to squawk at each other in cockney, and if you dress women in period costume and have them squawk at each other in cockney, you’re bound to invoke the ghost of Carry On to some extent. Heather Graham doesn’t exhibit star quality here, but she does the job perfectly well and her shot at the accent seldom grates too much.

Johnny Depp puts in a restrained performance as a police inspector with psychic abilities which he amplifies through the use of opium and laudanum. Very decadent. Some of the dream/hallucination sequences are very nicely done, with glimpses of hideously warped faces and a great woozy atmosphere. Robbie Coltrane appears as himself.

Ian Holm is always great value, even in small parts, and I enjoyed him in this, playing a retired surgeon consulted by Johnny Depp.

That atmosphere of creeping supernatural dread I wanted never really came. Despite the film’s name, and its early acceptance that there’s something in clairvoyance (Depp’s dreams), there was never any sense that the Ripper might be anything but a depraved human. That’s fine: my expectations were skewed. The true villain of the piece is quite powerful and scary enough.

[Tangent: I do like films where what you assume to be earthly powers turn out to be Satan himself! Split Second, Fallen, the superb Besat (sadly unavailable on DVD with English subtitles)]

Of the double good ending / bad ending, I wasn’t too happy with the former, but I’m able to rationalise it as a Brazil “good” ending (and to understand what I’m getting at there, you’ll have to have seen both films).

All in all, worthwhile. To be honest I was expecting to enjoy spotting flaws, but instead I enjoyed it in a far less cynical way.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2005 at 05:53 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.