The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Concerned by his good friend Dr Henry Jekyll's recent behaviour, Gabriel Utterson is driven to uncover the identity of the mysterious and dangerous Mr. Hyde, to whom Jekyll is enthralled.

To be fair to director Hope Dickson Leach, she has clearly not had much money with which to produce this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's short-ish story. What we end up with is a really pretty dry, dingy and paceless version with an enthusiastic but really only competent cast delivering the goods. "Utterson" (Lorn Macdonald) in an ambitious Edinburgh lawyer who is introduced by his friend "Harry Jekyll" (Henry Pettigrew) to the wealthy brewing magnate "Sir Danvers" (David Hayman). Now this gent has a cunning plan to build an huge national monument on the bog-soaked, corpse-ridden, Calton Hill on the outskirts of the city. "Utterson" is tasked with making it possible - regardless of the graves. Meantime, his friend "Jekyll" is becoming a little poorly looking, his behaviour erratic and he also seems to be increasingly under the influence of his enigmatic friend "Mr. Hyde". Getting next to no information from housekeeper "Poole" (Alison Peebles), "Utterson" must try to find out what's happening to his friend before something tragic occurs. It's an hard story to do well at the best of times - think of the character in the money-didn't-matter "League of Extraordinary Gentleman" (2003), so I don't think it was a daft idea to try and present this more within it's means. The monochrome photography goes some way to creating an eerie city well enough, but the acting is straight from rep. It's great that Hayman continues to support Scottish movie-making, but the whole thing just looks like a stage play on, admittedly, quite a few different sets. The production is sterile and wooden, and neither Macdonald nor Pettigrew are anything like convincing with their depictions, especially as the madness grips the latter character and the tension is supposed to mount. I'm afraid to say there are at least three better versions of this in a pretty saturated movie market of Jekyll & Hyde stories.