The beginnings of our own time

Rating: Null/10 (21 October 2001)

As Jack the Ripper boasted (in the film) that he gave birth to the 20th Century. The horror of the human mind is the hell into which we see here. It is a truly unsettling view of the monstrousness of twisted thought, something far more terrifying than any physical deformity.
The imagery and atmosphere are excellent to create a dark underworld hidden by the prim and proper veneer of the Victorian world. Insanity, drugs, power, misguided loyalty, and religious fanaticism -- all things we see in our own time -- are played out in this unnervingly dark mystery that would have Sherlock Holmes stunned and gasping.
Depp gives a spooky, restrained performance, and Holm is wonderful in all elements of his presentation. The eyes of death have never been more dramatically revealed. And the real horror is that this story is based on one theory of what actually happened in the notorious Ripper crimes.
If the Ripper gave birth to the 20th Century, what more horrors await in the 21st?