Review of From Hell (2001) by Gareth R — 29 Mar 2009

Jack The Ripper is arguably the most famous and terrifying serial killer in British history. Making a film about him that is both mysterious and scary ought to be pretty simple, then: nobody knows who he was, although there are theories, and he was never caught. The seemingly unstoppable and ethereal nature of Jack is what makes him such a frightening proposition; it's why we still give a damn over a hundred years later.

What I'm driving at is that From Hell should be good, or at least scary. But it isn't. This ghastly, redundant film robs the Ripper of any mystery, chucking in its lot with one explanation and only one for who he was, why he did it and why he stopped. There is no room for you to make up your own mind about it, and worse still, no character in this whole sorry mess to care or worry about. Truly, it's a Hellish place to look at, what with the lunch-dislodging amounts of viscera on display and wonky camera angles galore, and I can think of no reason for you to spend two hours there.

The directors - the Hughes Brothers, whoever they are - even fail at showing Whitechapel's shock and terror at what the Ripper is doing, because the place is as nasty, dirty and murderous *before* him as it is after. The people he's killing are interchangeable, mostly unlikeable hags, who for some reason don't get out of Whitechapel even though Jack the Ripper is apparently killing a specific group of people and nobody else. (Another detail that naggingly cuts his air of mystery and threat in half. He's even got a hit list, for f**k's sake, yet the police are unable to deduce this without the aid of a semi-psychic.).

Worst of all, and there's stiff competition, is Johnny Depp. Generally one of those truly reliable actors who is regularly the best thing in otherwise drab material (such as Sleepy Hollow, which is a lot better than this), Depp turns in a pathetic non-performance here. Muttering and looking bored, he's playing Inspector Aberline, a man with badly-explained psychic abilities whose talent for prediction gives him precisely no advantage at catching criminals.

The Hughses try to insinuate some kind of relationship between Aberline and main prostitute Mary (Heather Graham). These scenes flail almost comically, in part due to Depp's determination to stare vaguely into the foreground while gently Dick Van Dyking his lines, and equally thanks to Heather Graham's dreadful, unconvincing performance as Mary. However distracting as her accent and luminous hair-dye are, it must be the startling disappointment of seeing Depp miss completely that "steals the show". Speaking of which, any scenes with his pseudo-comic foil, Robbie Coltrane, leave you preferring Coltrane.

In two hours, From Hell manages not to muster any tension at all. Partly that's because we know Jack doesn't get caught, but mostly it's the lackadaisical structure of the movie. Jack is free to butcher these women night after night, while Aberline connects bits of vague theories together and sweats a lot. When the film wants to scare us it adds silly slicey noises to the Ripper's coach-stairs, or just startles us with the level of on-screen gore it's prepared to vomit at us. There's nothing scary here, nor surprising; Aberline's just another cheesy cop-who-doesn't-work-by-the-rules, and the audience will be able to guess the Ripper's identity simply enough if they have the capacity to recognise an actor's voice. Even Whitechapel, as painted by the Hughes Brothers, manages to resemble every cliched dirty Victorian movie you've ever seen. It's just prepared to go a little dirtier than most.

So, not scary, not interesting. What's to be got out of it all? I honestly can't say. The time ticks by fast enough - yes, I'm listing that as a plus - and... well, that's it. It's a miserable, rather unconvincing and narrow-minded movie, with a cast of cardboard people spilling their guts a lot. Even the characters seem mildly relieved when it's over. There's probably more to say about it, but I'd quite like to bury From Hell in the garden, put something else on and move on with my life. Dank and nauseating, but don't forget tedious, this is just worthless.