It hurts to think about this one

Rating: 5/10 (21 October 2001)

After watching half an hour or so of From Hell I felt as if the Hughes Brothers had strapped me down and performed some impromptu butchery on my brain. As soon as I saw that opening shot of London's blood-red skyline (after a promising into that does for opium what Pulp Fiction did for heroin) I knew that this movie was going to be an unrestrained and unsubtle Hollywood dream of Victorian England.
What is it about pre-twentieth century Britain that makes American filmmakers froth at the mouth and scream "More blood! More filters! More simple-minded exposition!"? 1992's Dracula at least had the excuse of basing its extravagant visuals on an equally lurid literary source, but From Hell's betters are, well, better than that. I loved the original graphic novel for its black and white images that looked like swiftly executed but amazingly skilful sketches. There was a subtlety of artifice that made the story all the more terrifying.
So much for that. The Hughes Brothers pour on every daft trick they can think of to conceal the fact that a) they have no feeling for late-1800s London, except as a Cockney version of inner-city Washington; and b) the screenwriters Hayes and Yglesias didn't know to condense the wealth of information and paranoid plot detail from the original into a working screenplay. The pacing of From Hell is, as another commentator noticed, bizarre. The first act, before Depp's character begins to take an interest in the movie, is unbelievable clunky and awkward. The early moments seem drained of drama, as if they were tentative character improvisations in the first days of shooting rather than actual scripted scenes. Characters step into frame to announce their plot significance and motivation and then step off again; if they're not played by Depp, Graham, or Holm, they're onscreen only to talk desperately or menacingly, show cleavage or knives, and kill or be killed.
In case you're wondering, Heather Graham does not make a convincing Victorian prostitute. After five seconds of screen time, even before she opened her mouth to attempt a Cockney accent, it is immediately apparent that a casting mistake has been made. The real horror of From Hell comes from the suspense between Graham's scenes; you never know when she's going to pop up next and whine out a line about being hungry and impoverished. It is like being lied to by someone who has stolen your jacket and wears it in front of you; you admire the audacity but you are not convinced.
The rest of the cast stands up to the overbearing directorial style with a campy resistance that produces some enjoyment. I liked Depp's thuggish London accent, which has him saying things like "Fank you" and "I fink there's somefing going on here". Ian Holm jumps around in the birdbath of his own cultural folklore and makes all the other performances seem amateurish.
This movie, like a whole schwack of others, is a kind of film soup: part inner-city police procedural, part period piece, part slasher flick. Other generic elements surface occasionally, but the Hughes Brothers wield such a furious spoon that it's hard to see the ingredients. The conflicting requirements of genre sometimes produce anachronisms and unlikelihoods that strain the limits of credibility. Heather Graham's character Mary Kelly is an Irish peasant who left at the age of eight to take up an exciting career in Whitechapel as a prostitute, but she can read and write - and has beautiful penmanship. Say what you like about the institution of schools in Victorian England; it's still ridiculous.
More ridiculous still are scenes in which Kelly suggests that she left Ireland and came to England because "it seemed too small a place to live the rest of my life in". Never mind the crushing poverty, the potato blight, and the stigma of being an Irish Catholic in Victorian England. It's all about that restless feeling that makes you want to leave your dead-end town, get on that ferry and take your hopes and dreams to glitzy glamorous Whitechapel. And all at the age of eight, apparently. I can only hope that I misheard something. A bit more forgiveable (but no less stupid) is the uncomfortable resemblance between the London constabulary of 1888 and the NYPD circa 1988. Inspector Abberline, when he's not having opium-induced visions, acts like a renegade American cop with an infusion of British politeness. As the movie progresses, examinations of the corpses begin to sound more and more like the autopsy scenes from "Silence of the Lambs".
The really anachronistic, or perhaps historically blind, elements of From Hell would involve giving away the whodunnit modular unit of the film, so you'll have to see it yourself. But don't. Unless you like blood (there's lots), or Johnny Depp's cheekbones (does this man never age?), or if you enjoy the spectator sport of watching lesser-known British actors steal scene after scene from hapless American stars. There's also some really really bad continuity errors. Jason Flemyng plays a tormented coachman with one of his ears partially lopped off. Watch for the scene in the film that explains his torments and explores his psyche. It consists almost entirely of a close-up on his face. Take a look at his ears. Then leave the theatre: tell people you've just come from hell.