Curator Watchlist
A moody, blood-soaked Victorian murder mystery with strong atmosphere and production design, but the film’s pulpy conspiracy plot and uneven tone keep it from fully landing. It’s worth it for viewers who like grim period horror-thrillers and stylized detective stories more than for those wanting a tight,… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 2h 2m
Director: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes
Starring: Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm
Frederick Abberline is an opium-huffing inspector from Scotland Yard who falls for one of Jack the Ripper's prostitute targets in this Hughes brothers adaption of a graphic novel that posits the Ripper's true identity.
Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes
Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm
A moody, blood-soaked Victorian murder mystery with strong atmosphere and production design, but the film’s pulpy conspiracy plot and uneven tone keep it from fully landing. It’s worth it for viewers who like grim period horror-thrillers and stylized detective stories more than for those wanting a tight, historically grounded Jack the Ripper film.
From Hell is at its best as a fog-choked descent into Victorian rot. The Hughes brothers lean hard into red-black imagery, alleyway dread, and a sense that London itself is diseased, which gives the film a memorable, oppressive texture even when the story gets unwieldy.
The mystery is built around a grand conspiracy theory, and that gives the film scale, but also some strain. It wants to be a detective story, a social critique, and a lurid horror film at once, and the seams show. Still, the visual control and sense of menace are strong enough to carry it through its weaker stretches.
If you’re drawn to grim period pieces with occult overtones, opium haze, and a fascination with corruption at the top of society, it has a lot to offer. If you want a cleaner, sharper thriller, this one may feel more like a fascinating mess than a satisfying solve.
jessica (3★) · 346 likes
just hagrid and grindelwald fighting crime
wersku (3★) · 248 likes
Literally straight from hell, a dreamlike...ish, but clear nightmare that reveals something surprisingly terrifying. The film’s monster, the familiar killer, is not just that. Because the monster becomes part of a greater machine that feels intimate in that clammy, almost personal way. The Hughes brothers have a clear vision of what they wanted to create with this film, and whether it works... well... In a film like this, control is everything, it's the invisible hand that should guide every frame… more
Anna🍓 (3★) · 245 likes
Favourite part was the first shot of Depp getting high and my mum going “awe thats just a regular day for him” right at the same time I thought it. We are so in sync.
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (2★) · 184 likes
This has been a long time coming. Another of those films they kept playing clips of on various TV segments and one with which I’ve been intrigued. So intrigued, I got the original Alan Moore graphic novel and the plan was to read that before watching the novel to compare and catch any easter eggs. Unfortunately, I found the graphic novel to be a bit of a chore to get through, and to this day I haven’t finished it, so
RanchoTuVu (4★) · 177 likes
"From Hell" presents a dark story behind the Jack the Ripper murders of prostitutes that suggests it was something more than acts of extreme violence committed by a madman. Like an Italian giallo that shows how sick society has become at its uppermost levels, "From Hell" takes you into the heights of London society and how it was permeated by anti-Semitism, arrogance, and the sanctioned license to commit barbaric medical experiments just so long as they were done on people
Shares the same sense of urban decay, ritualized murder, and oppressive dread, with a procedural spine that keeps the nightmare moving.
A stylized, fog-drenched gothic mystery with a strong period mood and a taste for blood-soaked atmosphere.
For viewers who like occult conspiracy, investigation, and a slow-burn descent into sinister hidden networks.
A medieval murder mystery that blends investigation, corruption, and intellectual unease in a richly textured historical setting.
Not horror, but it offers a sharp look at class hierarchy and hidden rot beneath elegant surfaces.
Another Victorian serial-killer mystery with theatrical atmosphere, literary intrigue, and grim London streets.
A gothic period horror with heavy atmosphere, tragic undertones, and a love of shadowy production design.
For its dark comic-book sensibility, rain-slicked visual style, and romanticized violence.
A pulpy historical mystery centered on a famous killer and a detective chase through a grim period setting.
Not thematically similar in plot, but a good fit for viewers who like frontier-era tension and old-school genre craftsmanship.
A classic Sherlockian take on the Ripper case, ideal for comparing a more traditional mystery approach to the same legend.
A baroque revenge thriller with grotesque invention, macabre humor, and a theatrical sense of doom.
Jack the Ripper mythology, Victorian London, conspiracy and corruption, class divide, misogyny and violence against women, gothic horror, detective investigation, occult and Freemason intrigue
gothic horror, period thriller, murder mystery, Victorian era, atmospheric, grimy, conspiracy, serial killer, noir-tinged, historical horror