- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100Sensational and accomplished.
-
88Gripping and stylish thriller.
-
80Their discretion makes From Hell less a horror movie than a classical film noir.
-
80Superbly shot around Prague -- From Hell is even more stylish than gruesome -- it has the lush decrepitude of an autumn compost heap or an old Hammer werewolf flick.
-
80Surprisingly conventional Olde London Towne gaslight mystery, gussied up with some doctored visuals, and an eccentric performance by Johnny Depp.
-
80Ambitious, visually stunning and hugely accomplished.
-
80A visionary breakthrough for the young directors, a darkly alluring and largely successful attempt to crowd the territory of Roman Polanski and Dario Argento.
-
75The movie feels dark, clammy and exhilarating -- it's like belonging to a secret club where you can have a lot of fun but might get into trouble.
-
75The movie works well as a straight-out horror yarn, proving that the Hughes Brothers are more versatile than their previous "ghetto pictures" suggest.
-
75Mystery skillfully evokes Victorian London's dark depths.
-
75Depp gives yet another introspective, slightly mopey performance -- Graham never begins to act (and never has begun, as far as I know). But they're surrounded by an authentic, first-rate English cast.
-
70It's not a great movie by any means, but it grips tighter than a chokehold and it cuts as deep as a knife.
-
67A tug-of-war between a bracing vision of a truly infernal crime spree -- complete with engaging whodunit storytelling -- and a sometimes clumsy period drama.
-
67It's by far the most violent, most clinical and most sumptuously atmospheric.
-
63An amazing physical specimen, beautifully photographed and edited. If you think of it as your own opium dream, you may dismiss the lousy story as a mere side effect.
-
60The movie's most glaring flaw is that the brothers and their screenwriters, Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias, don't manage to preserve the secret of the Ripper's identity for nearly as long as they intend to.
-
60An astonishing act of synthesis, bringing together disparate Ripper theories and a fiercely idiosyncratic version of London's history, architecture, policing and social structure.
-
60So beautifully realized as a mood piece that it takes a while for a slight disappointment to register.
-
50Lacks the energy and urgency of its source material.
-
50There's no bite or sting, nor is there a single moment when the film is anything close to scary. It isn't ever engaging, either; it's a dull, sluggish bum-out.
-
50With almost as many subplots as corpses, the movie maintains its mild watchability only because the Ripper saga still engrosses.
-
50Labyrinthine yet oversimple, the story seems to hide a more provocative one. But perhaps this is the nature of the beast.
-
40Could have been a beautiful and suspenseful thriller, lukewarm performances make the film just another movie to add to one's "rent-it-when-it-comes-to-DVD" list.
-
40A visual tour-de-force; it's just that there's not much else to sink your teeth into once the pretty colors fade from view.
-
40It is deeply unpleasant to see women abducted, tortured and eviscerated by a methodical and meticulous butcher.
-
38Feels stagy, stiff and entirely unnecessary.
-
38What the Hughes brothers have come up with is, to borrow another phrase from that bygone age, a penny dreadful.
-
38A visionary sort of horror movie should ponder three words: "Bram Stoker's Dracula."
-
30A brain-dead version of a dark and complex work.
-
30The only note of authenticity in the movie comes from Ian Holm, playing the royal physician. What is this nuanced performance -- at least until the final fireworks -- doing in this twaddle?
-
20The Hughes boys blow it by burying a fine cast -- Robbie Coltrane as a cop and Ian Holm as a royal sawbones are standouts -- in stock scares, sappy romance and cliches that really are from hell.
-
20Feels razor thin. None of the characters is particularly noteworthy. And the revelations of deep-seated conspiracy in the usual privileged, closed circles are hackneyed and tired.