Gore galore with The Limehouse Golem

There is something pleasingly over-cooked about The Limehouse Golem with plenty for those of us who love a good gaslight thriller to get excited about. It’s got thrills, it’s got shocks, it’s got a glorious Grand Guignol style, and it has gore by the bucket load as well as a very satisfying resolution. It is the very model of a melodrama directed with some flair by Juan Carlos Medina.

Although the source material is nominally Peter Ackroyd’s 1994 novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, Jane Goldman’s script also draws on period stories such as the Ratcliff Highway murders, the Jack the Ripper suspect James Maybrick who was poisoned by his wife, and of course the Ripper case itself which comes eight years after the events depicted here. While this has the effect of taking away much of the queer subtext of Ackroyd’s novel, it does lend a narrative richness that adds to a sense of hyper-realism.

Our hero is closeted detective Kildare (Bill Nighy) who has been given the case of The Limehouse Golem, a serial killer operating in the eponymous district who has the whole city terrified. It’s a lose-lose case for Kildare, who is something of an embarrassment to the force, until he comes across Lizzie Cree (Olivia Cooke). She is on trial for the murder of her husband, John, a failed playwright who happens to be one of Kildare’s prime suspects. The detective realises if he can prove that the husband is the Golem then the wife, who refuses to speak out in her own defence, can be saved.

In the midst of this is music-hall superstar Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), one of the most famous men in England, and the pivot on which the story revolves. Leno acts out many of the Golem’s atrocities on stage and at times it is hard to know where the fiction starts and ends.

Structurally the story is told by flashing back and forward from the death of John Cree which adds to the sense of dislocation. Goldman’s script is patchy; the revelation of Kildare’s sexuality is particularly clunky, but she is more sure-footed in recreating the Victorian demi-monde and the world of the music-hall.

The music hall scenes are very well done with the exception of Booth whose Leno is a muted, almost taciturn figure on stage and off. He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a real music hall. Booth apart there are some very nice moments from Bill Nighy, his second great performance this year, as well as Olivia Cooke, Eddie Marsan, Henry Goldman, and the ever-reliable Daniel Mays.

The Limehouse Golem doesn’t quite hang together but Medina handles the material with commendable brio and energy and there is enough intelligence at the heart of the story to keep you watching – and guessing.