From Hell

Review by By Clint Morris

With more punch that a prom night concoction and exceedingly more piercing than a busted artery, the Hughes' Brother's From Hell revels in its archival blend of facts, figures and Hollywood endowment.

As morbid as a blood-soaked icy-pole and as eerie as a fierce whistling wind, this dark thriller dreams up a feasible scenario for the Jack the Ripper case, one of the most baffling crimes of all time. The identity and motives behind the murderous icon have never been solved - but the Hughes brothers have a suggestion.

The filmmakers take us inside the gaslight and cobblestone streets of London - 1888 - a maze of secret seclusion and cantonment. In the white chapel district, financially strapped women offer themselves for money, and night after night they bestride against a dirty wall smothered in the bad breath of a drunken fiend. One night the streets get morose, unsafe. A new killer is on the loose and he's taking down the hookers.

Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), a pale-skinned prostitute, believes the murderer is after her group, and she's waiting her moment to be the subject of the killer's study in removing body-parts - but the dead bodies are drumming up notice from authorities, and she might soon have a savoir.

Fred Abberline (Johnny Depp), is an investigator already several steps ahead of his peers. He's a psychic druggie, an opium aficionado who laces his delirium with absinthe and laudanum, all as a way of hallucinating dreams of slaughter that may have yet to take place.

With the aid of Sir William Gull (Ian Holm), Abberline's faced with the duty to catch a killer before he kills any more women - in particular his dove Mary Kelly - and hopefully unmask the Ripper's reasoning along the way.

Where From Hell succeeds is in its astuteness. More than a mere serial killer thriller, it's deep in facts, figures and plausible scenario. A black plot that involves the police, the order of the Freemasons, and a highly secret but significant baby is to die for and the imminent conspiracy amounts to a spiritual cross-section of fin-de-siàcle London.

London looks a wonder. The look, the feel, the timely lensing… it's immersing. Coupled with a tight script, influential music and refined performances results in a film above par from the usual popcorn scare-miester we have been treated to over the past couple of years.

Depp's Abberline is unconventionally convincing and a perfect tour guide to the jaunt back. And as nice as Graham is as Mary Kelly, portly Robbie Coltrane is a more fitting confidante as Abberline's inspector comrade. To a sense, the only descent in the film is the coupling of Depp and Graham. Their undeveloped on-screen romance is one of the film's more inadequate inconsistencies.

A pragmatic open-book into one of yesterday's grisliest occurrences, From Hell is a tersely tied scripture engrossed with suspense, command and enthrallment.

4 out of 5

From Hell
Australian release: Commences Thursday February 14th
Cast: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Robbie Coltrane, Ian Holm, Ian Richardson.
Director: The Hughes Brothers
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