The Jack the Ripper case is history’s greatest unsolved murder mystery. So of course Hollywood looked at Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s brilliant, labyrinthine graphic novel From Hell and thought: Let’s make it about Johnny Depp having visions while Heather Graham tries not to look too modern in a corset. The Hughes Brothers’ film adaptation is less a forensic reconstruction of Victorian London and more a gothic soap opera filmed through a permanent Instagram filter called “Opium Dreams.” And yet, against all odds, it’s stylish, entertaining, and just self-serious enough to be funny in all the wrong ways.
Depp, Drugs, and Detecting
Johnny Depp plays Inspector Frederick Abberline, a Scotland Yard detective investigating the Whitechapel murders while maintaining a strict diet of laudanum and opium. Imagine Sherlock Holmes if Holmes kept nodding off mid-case and woke up with eyeliner still perfectly intact. Depp mumbles his way through the role with that brooding sensitivity he used to weaponize before he discovered pirate eyeliner could pay for multiple islands.
Abberline has “visions” of the murders—conveniently filmed in red-tinted slow motion, as if Jack the Ripper hired Dario Argento to direct his crime spree. Instead of painstaking detective work, Abberline basically stumbles onto the conspiracy because he’s hallucinating on the Victorian equivalent of a rave. It’s a bold move: solve crimes by being high enough to commune with the killer. CSI: Opium Den never took off, but maybe it should have.
Heather Graham: Pretty Woman, Wrong Century
Heather Graham plays Mary Kelly, the film’s token prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold, except she looks less like a Whitechapel sex worker and more like she just wandered out of a yoga retreat in Vermont. Her accent hovers somewhere between “generic Irish” and “I saw Braveheart once,” but the movie clearly isn’t interested in historical authenticity. She exists to be buxom, sympathetic, and to make Johnny Depp’s visions more romantic.
That said, Graham does her best to inject warmth into a role that’s basically “run from man with knife, look longingly at detective, occasionally scream.” She’s a survivor, sure, but she’s also a Victorian rom-com heroine trapped in a horror movie. The tonal whiplash is almost impressive.
Ian Holm: Sir William Gull, the Classy Butcher
Then there’s Ian Holm as Sir William Gull, physician to the Queen and—spoiler alert—Jack the Ripper himself. Holm delivers his lines with the gravitas of a Shakespearean actor, which makes his descent into ritualistic Freemason murder surprisingly fun. Imagine Bilbo Baggins deciding, “You know what, I’ll carve up some sex workers before second breakfast.”
When Gull finally monologues about giving “birth to the 20th century,” it’s delivered with such earnest menace that you almost forget the movie has spent two hours circling conspiracy theories like a drunk dog chasing its tail. Holm sells the villainy so well you that you wish the movie just followed him from the start, slicing through London like Hannibal Lecter with a surgical kit.
Fog Machines and Blood Buckets
If nothing else, From Hell nails atmosphere. The production team went all in on the “gothic London” aesthetic: fog that never stops, gas lamps that look stolen from a Universal monster movie, and cobblestone streets permanently soaked in rain or blood. This isn’t the real Whitechapel—it’s Whitechapel as imagined by a set designer who just binge-watched Sleepy Hollow.
The murders themselves are staged with gruesome precision. Entrails spill, throats are slit, and the camera lingers just enough to make you squirm without crossing into grindhouse territory. It’s grotesque, but in a painterly way, like Caravaggio if he really had a thing for guts.
Conspiracy Buffet
The graphic novel dives deep into Masonic conspiracies, royal scandals, and philosophical musings about history. The film says: “Sure, we’ll do all that, but faster and with more fog.” The result is a whirlwind of theories—royal bastards, syphilis, lobotomies, secret societies—all tossed into a cinematic stew that tastes vaguely of X-Files: Victorian Edition.
Does any of it make sense? Not really. But it sounds sinister when delivered in Ian Richardson’s booming voice, and that’s all the film really needs. When in doubt, add another monocled aristocrat muttering about duty to the Crown.
Robbie Coltrane: MVP Sidekick
Robbie Coltrane plays Sergeant Peter Godley, Abberline’s partner and the one character who seems aware he’s in a ridiculous movie. He cracks jokes, raises eyebrows at Depp’s drug binges, and generally acts like the audience’s surrogate: “Really? We’re trusting the visions again?” Without Coltrane grounding the madness, the whole film might collapse under the weight of its own gothic pomposity.
Opium Chic: The Real Star
It’s impossible to talk about From Hell without addressing its true aesthetic obsession: opium. Depp spends half the movie lighting pipes, sipping laudanum, or waking up from visions like he’s in a Victorian edition of Trainspotting. The movie glamorizes drug addiction in a way that borders on parody. You almost expect a montage of Depp stumbling through crime scenes to a slow-motion ballad while smoke curls artistically around his face.
If the film teaches us anything, it’s that the best way to solve a murder is to mainline enough narcotics to hallucinate your way to the truth. Move over Sherlock Holmes—Inspector Abberline is the patron saint of functioning addicts with prophetic dreams.
The Ending: Tragedy in Red
Like any self-respecting gothic thriller, the film ends in melodrama. Mary Kelly is presumed murdered, but surprise! Gull killed the wrong redhead. Abberline, devastated, retreats into opium and eventually overdoses. It’s supposed to be tragic, but given Depp’s performance, it plays more like, “Well, at least he finally got some sleep.”
Mary, meanwhile, gets a happy ending in Ireland with Ann’s child, which feels tacked on—as if the producers suddenly remembered Heather Graham was still under contract. It’s schmaltzy, but after two hours of entrails and gloom, maybe the audience deserves a little sunshine.
Why It Works (Sort Of)
Despite its flaws—ahistorical casting, muddled conspiracy, Heather Graham’s accent—the film works as a lush, atmospheric horror-thriller. The Hughes Brothers know how to shoot dread: every frame drips with menace, every shadow hides a blade. The pacing occasionally limps, but when Holm is slicing or Depp is hallucinating, it’s hard to look away.
And let’s be honest: no one watches From Hell for historical accuracy. They watch it for gothic melodrama, for Johnny Depp in velvet coats whispering about visions, for Heather Graham’s bustline and for Ian Holm gleefully carving his way into cinematic villainy.
Final Thoughts
From Hell is less a faithful adaptation of Alan Moore’s dense graphic novel and more a stylish hallucination dressed up as history. It’s messy, melodramatic, and occasionally ridiculous—but it’s also beautifully shot, well-acted, and morbidly entertaining. If Jack the Ripper really did “give birth to the 20th century,” then this film is the Victorian ultrasound: blurry, haunting, and a little absurd.
