Tag Archives: Hammer Films

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Medical Malpractice

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Dr. Jekyll

by Hope Madden

You can’t blame a film for not being what you hoped it was going to be. The fact that your goals don’t match the filmmaker’s goals doesn’t mean the film is less than it should be, just that the filmmaker had their own plan and if you want to see the movie you hoped for, it’s up to you to make it.

The idea of Eddie Izzard playing Dr. Jekyll is tantalizing, bursting with possibilities as a statement on being trans—sort of I Saw the TV Glow but goth. This is an amazing idea and a movie I’d like to see. And Dr. Jekyll is a Hammer Horror, which makes it sound like even more fun.

It is not. Not a meditation on being trans—an unfortunate waste of an opportunity, but if that wasn’t in the filmmakers’ plans, so be it. But it’s also not fun, not anything worth your time. What a waste.

Izzard does all she can with the role of reclusive Big Pharma billionaire Dr. Nina Jekyll. Jekyll’s assistant and only connection to the outside world—the always welcome Lindsay Duncan—is looking for a live in caregiver. Somehow, Rob (Scott Chambers) lands an interview. It was a mistake, never meant to happen, can’t imagine how he wasn’t vetted.

Jekyll takes an immediate shine to the goofy ex-con and hires him, against her assistant’s stern warning. But is it really Jekyll at all?

Izzard has a bit of fun with both characters and all’s well enough as long as she’s on screen. But at no time does director Joe Stephenson offer any reason to have revisited Robert Louis Stevenson’s old id/superego story.

First time screenwriter Dan Kelly-Mulhern tosses the source material in the bin but can come up with no relevant or interesting new twist, even though a tantalizing possibility is staring him in the face.

Chambers is certainly likeable enough in the role of doofus caregiver, but ex con with a guilty conscience and dark past? Not buying it for a second, which makes the character’s arc borderline ridiculous and Chambers lacks the chops to elevate the material.

The story itself is nothing but holes. With nary a coherent thread of story line to cling to, Izzard’s charm and wicked humor are in service of nothing. It’s almost offensive that RLS gets a writing credit.   

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Mad Science..Rarely Beneficial

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The Quiet Ones

by Hope Madden

Like many other genre fans, I was cautiously and nostalgically optimistic when a Dutch company bought the Brit horror producer Hammer Films with the promise of reviving the brand. Soon came the excellent, stylish remake Let Me In and the surprisingly spooky The Woman in Black. My optimism grew.

The Quiet Ones lets Hammer return to its expansive British dwellings for a period piece where mad science meets Sumerian curses.

OK, well that does sound like a flop, but wait. One of the writers, Oren Moverman, penned the exceptional indie dramas I’m Not There, The Messenger and Rampart. Surely he can take that premise and whip it into shape. I mean, unless he was actually brought in to salvage a muddled mess second draft adaptation of an old, unfilmed screenplay.

Wait, he was?

Well, that second draft surely benefited from the skilled hand of a genre expert, yes?

The guy who penned the abysmal American remake The Uninvited?

Well, poop.

It’s 1974, and an Oxford professor (Jared Harris) recruits two of his brightest students plus a willing, if nervous, cameraman to work with him on an unorthodox experiment. He intends to pull the negative energy out of Jane (Olivia Cooke – sort of a young Christina Ricci minus the sex appeal). Once he’s pulled it out, he wants to put it into an object – say, a creepy doll – and then throw it away, convinced that this will cure all mental illness everywhere. But Jane’s negative energy has a spirit of its own, and mad science rarely benefits its patients, anyway.

So, yes, The Quiet Ones suffers from a confused screenplay, but also from the uninspired direction of John Pogue (Ghost Ship – ugh).

Pogue misinterprets the old adage that in horror, less is more. This saying holds true only if you’re artfully leaving certain things to the ripe imagination of the viewer. If, instead, you’re wheeling your camera around in a frenzy to avoid having to show what’s going on, or your characters are conveniently pulled into closets just as the horror happens, you may just be a lazy filmmaker.

Not that The Quiet Ones is all bad. All performances are solid, with Harris bringing real zeal to his role. There are a couple of fun scares, too. For a casual consumer of horror, it’s better than about 50% of the material that hits screens, and offers a fun if forgettable way to spend 90 minutes.

But Hammer can do better.

 

Verdict-2-5-Stars