The Limehouse Golem - Das Monster von London

Despite being yet another film set in London (yawn) The Limehouse Golem is atmospheric and will certainly hold your attention. This is partly due to the detailed scenic constructions that create a dark, intimate atmosphere but also due to the excellent casting. Juan Carlos Medina brings out the best in the cast. Watch how he uses the actors' eyes to communicate directly with the audience via the camera lens. Oliva Cooke, alternately resembling Emma Watson and Julia Roberts, glows and sparkles and then freezes as the film jumps between her recalled memory and her jail cell. Sadly, the usually wonderful Bill Nighy only hints at his customary quirkiness and the inferred gayness of Nighy's Inspector Kildare and Daniel May's gentle George Flood seems strangely pointless. The interplay between audience the stage of the music hall and the audience draws the cinema audience right into the heart of the action. The music hall scenes are beautifully re-imagined and are a joy to watch. Douglas Booth turns in a beautifully sensitive portrayal of Dan Leno that reminded me of Eddie Redmayne in the Danish Girl.

Despite the fact that the film is a little under-written - I worked out the identity of the Golem about one third of the way through the film -

this is a very enjoyable and convincing tale that is well told. My major criticism of the film is that it is overlong. Sometimes less is more and the film would have benefited by tighter editing of the final scenes where fantasy and fact become confused leading to the audience being not quite sure what is happening.

Overall, though, a very enjoyable couple of hours spent in the cinema and please, film producers,let's have more films like this. But please also remember that London was not the only location in the UK where dark deeds happened in Victorian times. There was, and is, life and interest outside London.

The Limehouse Golem is a hugely atmospheric, gothic murder mystery. It is visually stunning, blood thirsty and enthralling. I enjoyed from start to finish, even if I couldn't always follow the plot at times. This is a film I think I will enjoy much more on subsequent viewings as I'll be able to take more in, and discover the small details I missed first time round. Stunning sets, glorious costumes, it really is a visual treat, they managed to capture the spirit of the Ripper's London. It felt like a film version of Ripper Street meets Sherlock. Fabulous performances, Billy Nighy, Olivia Cooke and Sam Reid all excellent, but the star of the show had to be Douglas Booth, who was simply tremendous.

Deserving of a higher rating here, and a higher status, this is a quality film. 7/10

A mash up of Se7en and The Elephant Man, this one is stylish but over long and relentlessly grim.

With a nod to the Jack the Ripper murders this one is set in London's underclass Limehouse, where Inspector under a cloud Nighy arrives to investigate the succession of "Golem" slasher murders. Suspects include comedian Dan Leno and a bushy bearded Karl Marx. Nighy's investigation gets involved with hard working actress wife Olivia Cooke's trial for poisoning her husband.

Alternating between the British Museum and Leno's tacky music hall attention shifts to Cooke's back story with lots of oppression of women, class warfare, homoerotic suspicions, opium dens and politicking at the Yard.

Cast and design are superior but this one is not a fun outing.

I'd have to call this movie intriguing rather than engrossing. The story is reasonably interesting. It focuses on the investigation into a series of Jack the Ripper-style murders in Victorian London in the 1880's committed by a killer who was known as The Limestone Golem. Alongside that investigation is the story (and trial) of a young woman and music hall actress named Elizabeth (Olivia Cooke) accused of poisoning her husband. Inspector Kildare of Scotland Yard (played by Bill Nighy) is assigned to investigate the Golem murders and also becomes involved with Elizabeth's case as he begins to think that her deceased husband might have been the Golem.

What I found most intriguing about this movie was the way in which actual historical figures of the time were woven into the plot. Dan Leno (Douglas Booth) was in fact a very famous British actor of the day; George Gissing (Margan Watkins) was a British novelist of the day and Karl Marx (Henry Goodman) really did live in London at the time. Leno, Gissing and Marx all became suspects in the Golem murders. I thought the fictional story managed to incorporate them into the plot very well and very believably. The performances were good. The setting of the movie seemed authentic. There was a Victorian feel to this movie in both the sets and the dialogue, and it was interesting to get a bit of the taste of what it migt have been like behind the scenes of a London music hall of that era. All that was well done.

The story, however, seemed somewhat choppy to me. I wasn't taken with the flow of the movie; it seemed inconsistent from beginning to end. At times it also seemed as if a little bit too much effort was being put in to trying to keep the viewer guessing, but the end result (for me) was times of confusion over the story more than anything. The "twist" in the plot as the murderer was finally revealed took me by surprise (which I appreciated) but then the movie went on for a little bit too long. Once the twist was revealed I was ready for the story itself to come to an end, and I thought the last few scenes (once the identity of the Golem had been revealed) were superfluous.

It was an interesting movie, even if it was a little bit uneven. Overall, I'd say it deserves a 6/10.

I wanted to love this. And I feel like I should have. But I didn't. I was interested in it enough to see it all the way through the end to find out the conclusion of the central mystery. Why was it just okay? I'm not sure. The performances were strong, and the period sets and costumes were amazing, but I would find my mind drifting throughout it, a lot. Too much. So I can only chalk it up to the script and the directing. The shots themselves in the movie were good. It looked beautiful.

But for whatever reason, I was never fully pulled in. And I think this was in large part because the crimes of the Limehouse Golem were all told as flashbacks essentially, there was no real suspense, except for one scene near the very end that I won't spoil. So yeah, ultimately I think the storytelling structure diminished the sense of suspense that should have been present in the story. The movie is also pretty violent/gory in those flashbacks, btw. That neither raised nor lowered my overall score of it, but it was violent enough that it's worth noting.