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\u201cHammer: A John Gore Company\u201d screams a blood-red caption in director Joe Stephenson\u2019s promising opening
title sequence.<\/p>\n
After buying iconic British studio Hammer Films, the self-effacing theatre mogul quickly snapped up the distribution rights to this low-budget Gothic horror.<\/p>\n
Next, as monkish chants begin to appear in the bombastic score, a newspaper page whirls on to the screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrans CEO Jekyll Accused Of Abuse,\u201d screams a headline as we cut to Eddie Izzard wearing a ballgown and high heels.<\/p>\n
According to the press release, this is \u201ca modern twist\u201d on Robert Louis Stevenson\u2019s 1886 story, and introducing the first trans Dr Jekyll feels like an edgy opening move from Gore\u2019s reborn Hammer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Sadly, once the titles end it becomes clear there is nothing particularly modern about Izzard\u2019s unusually attired boffin. It turns out Nina Jekyll is the grandchild of Stevenson\u2019s shapeshifting Victorian, and she inherited his pharmaceutical company and something of his condition.<\/p>\n
She isn\u2019t the only one possibly locked in a battle with base instincts. Fresh out of prison and desperately trying to stay straight to win custody of a daughter he\u2019s never met, former thief Rob (Scott Chambers) takes a job as a carer and odd job man for Jekyll, who is walking with a cane as a result of an unexplained ailment.<\/p>\n
Young Rob can\u2019t quite get a handle on his new boss. One moment, she is kind, the next, she\u2019s cruel. If only he knew a literary phrase to describe this sort of character…<\/p>\n
Izzard plays nice Nina and her tetchy alter ego Rachel Hyde with admirable restraint but Chambers\u2019s irritatingly wholesome turn offers few glimpses at Rob\u2019s dark side. The slow-burning plot limps along until we are drenched by a tsunami of hard-to-follow twists in the final act.<\/p>\n
The book, which drew on Charles Darwin\u2019s and Sigmund Freud\u2019s then-disturbing theories about repression and human biology, felt extremely \u201cmodern\u201d in the 1880s. The 2023 version errs way too far on the side of genteel respectability. It\u2019s positively Victorian.<\/p>\n
Doctor Jekyll,\u00a0Cert 15, In cinemas now<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] \u201cHammer: A John Gore Company\u201d screams a blood-red caption in director Joe Stephenson\u2019s promising opening title sequence. After buying iconic British studio Hammer Films, the self-effacing theatre mogul quickly snapped up the distribution rights to this low-budget Gothic horror. Next, as monkish chants begin to appear in the bombastic score, a newspaper page whirls …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[765],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}