Calling someone “Jekyll & Hyde” means that the person isn’t exactly sure when it comes to their personality or complexion. Their mood can change so quickly, it’s so shocking and familiar to generations of fans of the horror story around the world.
Many adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most famous comic, televised, film and reimagined Lingua Latina stories of all time . The perpetually challenged personality of the doctor has also appeared in comic books such as League Of Extraordinary Men, which was turned into a feature film by Sean Connery. The moral of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story about the internal struggle of good versus evil was also used by Stan Lee to create The Incredibles. Sterns, soon to be released as a feature film starring Ed Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner.
This ION television series, from the production company RHI Entertainment, tells the story from its roots in Victorian England to a large and turbulent city hit by a recent string of murders with vanquished heifers Dr. Henry Jekyll (Dougray Scott) is a respectable doctor who becomes part of a time consuming project. He got all his time in the lab digesting potions from the Amazon race. These tribes separated the soul from the man by extracting the plant from him.
As Jekyll begins to spend more and more time as Hyde, the more serious murders pile up, until finally the help of he played his ever-faithful good friend Tom Skeritt, co-star of Alien and Steel Magnolias among many popular favorites. Jekyll’s buddy brings him to help young attorney Claire Wheaton (Krista Bridges), and he promptly confesses to her that he is the killer. He refuses to believe that such an honorable pillar of the community is responsible until he finally gathers irrefutable evidence.
The production values are always solid, as the drama plays out strongly and that may be the most different thing in this re-imagining. The film has been turned into a carefully-dramatic study on a tortured serial killer from any time or cable channel. However, it never dips into melodrama or predictable territory. Unlike most other versions, this horror is more psychological than skin horror.
An effective choice is the ugly, bare-bones look of Mr Hyde. Incredibly subtle, sometimes even bordering on invisible, the Jekyll into Hyde transformation recalls one of the vampires transforming into their bestial selves in Joss Whedon’s Buffy: The Vampire Slayer TV series. Dressing Scots with spooky intent contactlenses, and applying a slight touch to the actor’s face, he makes Mr Hyde you might actually bump into a dark alley
Complete with a meaty third act market scene and a twist ending that, while not entirely unexpected, is nonetheless satisfying, this version of Jekyll and Hyde is not as memorable a classic as the 1931 version starring Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins , but succeeds in bringing new life, angles and ideas into the mix.
