FROM HELL (2001) I think that's where psychic links come from I suppose we need a new Jack the Ripper movie every once in a while. Jack has an enduring kind of popularity (is that the right word? Yeah, probably), likely because he was as close as any to serial killers in the movies. He did sick evil shit to his victims (beyond just killing them), he played mind games with the cops, and he got away! It's like the triple crown of serial killing. From Hell boasts one angle that has kept me, until now, from seeing it - the ol' psychic link. Johnny Depp plays Abberline, a London detective investigating the Ripper murders. He gets psychic visions when he uses opium or absinthe or laudanum - all those drugs goth girls write poetry about but don't know where to find. The upside to this is that these visions don't really go anywhere - they're basically an excuse for the directors (the Hughes brothers...maybe that "b" is supposed to be capitalized) to put together jangly "psychic vision" episodes, which I guess is he director equivalent of a guitar solo. Abberline could have just been an opium addict and the story would progress pretty much naturally. Heather Graham, who caught many a guffaw for this role as the cleanest, least nasty Victorian skid row hooker ever (I hear nothing but the most gap-toothed things about Victorian skid row hookers), plays Mary Reilly, who (no spoiler here) was the Ripper's final victim. I normally just don't like Graham, but I liked her here; her accent isn't all that great but she plays Mary with a sweet vulnerability that surrounds enough inner fire to talk contemptuously to the cops when necessary. Her friends kind of blur into similarly unlikely-looking Victorian skid row hookers, but I did like played by an actress whose name I cannot pin down, playing a violently aggressive lesbian seemingly always on the edge of slapping her bitch around. Depp doesn't really get to do much - he gets at least three "Duuuude, I'm doing drugs" scenes, but otherwise it's pretty standard stuff...getting slapped down by The Man, romancing a witness/victim, having his insights marvelled at by his assistant (Robbie Coltrane). Almost all the characters are flat and their relationships with each other shallow and perfunctory - the course of the relationship between Mary and Abberline could be guessed by anyone before a single frame of the film is shown. We do learn one thing - there aren't a lot of hard-core mavericks around here. You can express yourself to your superiors as you see fit until the boss raises his voice, at which point you lower your eyes and say "Yes, sir." What the movie lacks in characters and dialogue, it tries to make up for with a neat riff on Jack's story by throwing in Freemasons, proto-lobotomies, syphilitic royalty, the Elephant Man...you name it. The supplements on the DVD suggest self-servingly but fairly convincingly that the story and locations are pretty faithful to the known facts of the case - it's the ultimate explanation and resolution that are fanciful. The identity of the Ripper himself isn't too hard to guess from the cast, and once he's revealed, he's given dark contact lenses to make his spooky speeches spookier, I guess. It doesn't really work. The murder scenes - and I guess there are only five of them, no spoiler for those familiar with Ripper lore - are well enough done that the Hughes brothers might have a bit of a future in slasher flicks if their "ghetto movies" (their words man, not mine) don't pan out. From Hell has a bit of a shot-on-video look to it, which is slight enough that it's forgotten during the moments when it really moves, like those murders, or sped-up scenes of forensic work on the streets from before the days when police blocked off crime scenes until they were finished with them. The London skylines (red-lit clouds...yeah, that looks like Hell all right) and sets are all excellent. Even the presumably hardened coroner is made to vomit at the sight of one victim - one imagines that when serial killers hang out for pizza and beer, this has got to be one of their high-five moments. We don't see a lot of overt gore in this movie, but you're told about it and it's easily enough to impale a century worth of romanticizing Jack's story. Most people aren't going to even want to know what parts of the body he does things to, let alone what he does to them. I have to admit that the ending managed to tug a heartstring or two - not just with terrible, horrifying irony of Abberline's last assigned duties, but with his last opium-inspired vision, which is saddening because it's an almost cheesily idealized notion of a happier ending that didn't happen. Then somebody dies and someone else actually says "Goodnight, sweet prince". No, not in an evil villain way, but with perfect sincerity. If somebody says that over my deathbed, I'm coming back to slap him across his fat head. From Hell avoids a lot of the things I was prepared to hold against it, but there's still just too much missing - a villain that's halfway compelling once his identity is revealed, a non-cheesy relationship between any two characters, an arrival at its conclusion less dependent on making me think holy crap, you've got to be kidding. I don't know what was created for the movie, or from the massive comic book on which it was based. But so far as Jack the Ripper movies go, you could do a hell of a lot worse and in my experience, almost always would. BACK TO THE F's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE