The Limehouse Golem | Film review - Jack the Ripper with a twist

(Image credit: Nicola Dove)

Before the Ripper, fear had another name.

Bill Nighy tones down his trademark tics and plays things straight as the conflicted hero of The Limehouse Golem, a lurid but enthralling Victorian mystery thriller based on a 1994 novel by Peter Ackroyd. Jack the Ripper with a twist.

It is 1880 and Nighy’s doggedly noble Scotland Yard detective, John Kildare, is on the trail of a serial killer in London’s East End. Meanwhile, vaudeville performer Lizzie Cree (Olivia Cooke) is in the dock, accused of poisoning her husband. Are the crimes linked?

Kildare’s suspects are a mix of fictional and real-life characters - including cross-dressing music hall star Dan Leno (flamboyantly played by Douglas Booth), radical philosopher Karl Marx (Henry Goodman) and novelist George Gissing (Morgan Watkins). And with director Juan Carlos Medina doing an atmospheric job of conjuring up Victorian London in all its gaslit murk, the narrative that unfolds is teasing and slippery, a grisly and thoroughly gripping puzzle.

Certificate 15. Runtime 107 mins. Director Juan Carlos Medina

The Limehouse Golem is available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Lionsgate Home Entertainment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h_fEGCAJU0

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.