From Hell

A gruesome and stylish take on Jack the Ripper, From Hell sees the Hughes brothers marry mystery and mutilation to produce the world’s first arthouse slasher movie.

Based on Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s damn near immortal graphic novel of the same name, From Hell sees Inspector Frederick Abberline (Depp) sinking into absinthe and opium-induced hallucinations so that he might solve the mysteries which lie behind the Ripper’s legendary murder spree in the Whitechapel area of 1888. In the course of the investigation he makes contact with a group of ladies of the night, including Mary Kelly (Graham) and receives the assistance of the royal physician Sir William Gull (Holm).

Jack however, with his velvet-lined surgeon’s box of knives and saws promises to stay one step ahead. The precision of his grizzly deeds offer a clue and points at the elite classes, but Abberline’s investigations are continually frustrated.

Though lacking the scope of the meticulously researched original graphic novel with its socialist and feminist undertones, From Hell is a considerable achievement, though the film’s brutal depiction of the Ripper’s maniacal savagery is clearly not for everyone. As with the Hughes brothers’ previous work (Menace2Society, Dead Presidents) the direction can be very uneven and the film swings between cold, clinical aloofness and Hammer horror histrionics (not helped along by Graham’s ghastly cock-er-nee accent).

Still, the lush squalor of their Victorian England, replete with fog and cobblestones is breathtaking, and like a 1960’s Kubrick, they smuggle more into their movie than the studio probably reckoned with, effortlessly weaving the immediate mystery of the Ripper’s identity with the larger evil that spawned him. More ghoulish and chilling than truly frightening, From Hell makes for a flawed, yet fantastic journey.