This atmospheric black and white adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic classic from Hope Dickson Leach, the director of The Levelling, opens with a tremendous shiver of menace. In the dead of night, as an eerily inhuman singsong echoes on the soundtrack, a little girl walks along an alleyway. Something steps out of the shadows. From behind, it appears to be a man, a gentleman – in a top hat and exquisitely tailored shirt. But the way it moves, gliding like a predator towards the girl, is hardly human; then it savages her with the rotting teeth of an animal. Perhaps nothing else that follows quite lives up to this taste of evil.
Dickson Leach’s film adds to the pile of 120-plus screen versions of Jekyll and Hyde. This one started out last year as a “hybrid-production” staged in an Edinburgh theatre: for three nights, audiences sat in front of a screen watching a live stream of actors performing scenes on sets around the theatre. That footage has been edited – with added effects – to make this film. And it really does feel like a feature film (rather than filmed theatre): stylishly shot with a noirish feel, velvety rich black and white cinematography, camera furtively lurking in the shadows.
Dickson Leach switches the action from London to the book’s spiritual home of Edinburgh, where scrupulous lawyer Utterson (Lorn Macdonald) is worried about his old friend, the charismatic Dr Henry Jekyll (Henry Pettigrew). Why has Jekyll changed his will to make a mysterious thug, Edward Hyde, his beneficiary?
The gay subtext of the book is more apparent here. Utterson and Jekyll were clearly at one time in a relationship. Now Utterson fears that his ex lover is being blackmailed by Hyde – and Jekyll stokes the torment on his jealousy. Dickson Leach’s script, co-written with Vlad Butucea, rewrites the novella to show us the dark side of Utterson – and the city of Edinburgh too. To be honest, though, it’s not entirely clear if this adds anything to the story; at times it feels like an exasperating, unnecessary distraction.
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is in UK cinemas from 7 October and from 30 October on Sky Arts.
