From Hell

TIFF [2001]

Buy the From Hell Movie Poster

(USA, 2000, 120 minutes)
Directed by Albert and Allen Hughes
Screenplay by Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias
Based upon "From Hell" by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
Cast: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Robbie Coltrane, Ian Holm, Jason Flemyng, Leslie Sharp

Movie Review

(Started off well: Brian DePalma sat beside me, until his bad back got to him and a volunteer helped him move)

"Menace To Society" prodigies Albert and Allen Hughes leave the mean streets of LA for the bloodied cobblestones of London's Whitechapel District circa 1888. Based upon the justly acclaimed graphic novel by "Watchmen"s Alan Moore, "From Hell" aspires to be THE definitive "Jack The Ripper" opus but plays more like "The Bone Collector" by gaslight.

Star Heather Graham faces the press

Directors Albert and Allen Hughes

The film's better moments suggest Thomas Harris ghost-writing "The Alienist", but overall I found the experience plodding and completely lacking in suspense and all-out scares. There are a few welcome nods to the comic: a pointless cameo by the Elephant Man (alas, no Oscar Wilde), and Detective Abberline (Johnny Depp)'s drug-fueled clairvoyance (in the comics, the visions were those of a bogus psychic, not Abberline). Beyond that, there's not much here that's different from any other Ripper film we've seen before, from "The Lodger" to "Murder By Decree", save for Springheel Jack's unmasking and the theory that the series of "From Hell" letters were fakes.

Talk Back

Cheekboned wonders Johnny Depp and Heather Graham (miscast as Mary Kelly, one of the Ripper's five known victims) fake adequate "Bri'ish" accents as rather idealized leads when compared to the blotchy, toothless populace in the rest of the district. Red-tressed, aerobicized Graham is certainly the loveliest streetwalker ever to decorate a London doorway. The supporting cast is more convincing, with Ian Holm as royal surgeon William Gull, Robbie Coltrane as Johnny Depp's partner, and Jason Flemyng as the Ripper's reluctant accomplice. Abberline's opium visions are suitably nightmarish CGI montages right out of a Floria Sigismondi video, and the many "rippings" and spurting arteries are surprisingly explicit for a major studio effort. The third act "coach chase", though, might remind more than one of you of the climax of last year's "Sleepy Hollow", which featured Johnny Depp as Icahbod Crane serving the same capacity as Abberline does here.

The ultimate identity of the Ripper conforms to the popular Buckingham Palace/Freemasons conspiracy theory, which I thought had more or less been disproved by Donald Rumbelow's excellent "The Complete Jack The Ripper Casebook". I'm sure that the literary-minded Moore intended his interpretation as a political allegory/rant against the corruption of Mother England -- on film, the twist comes as a something less than a shock, in what John Carpenter calls an "Oh my God, it's Harry!" moment (for the record, it's not Harry).

***MINOR SPOILER***: While the film is impeccably designed and shot, and its denouement is hardly "upbeat", it's hard to recommend a thriller supposedly based on the facts when the most famous victim of the case somehow survives.

- Robert L

Talk Back