Considering the presence of renowned comedian Eddie Izzard, it is astonishing that Doctor Jekyll is your standard, overly faithful Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. I was hoping it would have an engaging new take on the popular narrative, what with a trans woman in the lead. It did not.
Doctor Jekyll stars Izzard (who also goes by Suzy Izzard) as Nina Jekyll, the trans head of a pharmaceutical company. She has an unspecified accident that keeps her at home, and in search of a new, live-in caretaker. She goes with a young kid named Rob (Scott Chambers), a good guy recently released from prison for breaking and entering and theft. He also has a young daughter (Robyn Cara), who he has not met yet, and who is dying of cancer. Rob needs the job in hopes of gaining custody, or at least visitation rights.
Rob does his tasks diligently and follows Nina’s instructions, including shutting off the alarms in the house. This upsets Nina’s business manager, Sandra (Lindsay Duncan), and leads her to fire Rob, only to have Nina rehire him. That night, Rob overhears Nina arguing with someone who sounds like Sandra. Suspiciously, Sandra doesn’t answer her phone the next day. But Nina invites Rob to a game of chess and whiskey, and suggests, “Maybe I am the making of you.” That’s when things start to get hinky.
Doctor Jekyll throws a ton of exposition into the third act. We learn that Nina inherited the pharmaceuticals company from her grandfather, who created the persona-tranforming Hyde drug. A new subplot enters the film in the form of Rob’s background coming back to haunt him. Ultimately, it was too much shoved into the back end of the film, cumbersome rather than interesting.
The Jekyll and Hyde story seems perfect for a trans retelling. It is a story about change, and layers of self. Frankly, I thought that having Eddie Izzard, a trans actor and comedian, was going to mean that the movie would have a revelatory transgendered message to it: A true update to the double-identity story. And yet it didn’t. When Hyde comes out to play, she is exactly the same as Jekyll — to the point where I could barely tell them apart. Not only were Jekyll and Hyde the same gender, they dressed the same and spoke the same. The depth of that missed opportunity is an utter disappointment.
There were minor moments that felt like they would be more significant than they ended up being. Nina gives Rob a watch early on. I even made a note: “This is important.” But it wasn’t. The watch is brought up as evidence that Rob was stealing, but the story not only misses the chance to tie it symbolically to time, how little we have of it, living in the moment, the importance of change, etc., it seems as though the filmmakers were unaware of the concept of symbolic storytelling altogether.
Similarly, there is a scene in which Rob finds a necklace while doing yardwork. The necklace is never mentioned again. I imagine that these scenes (especially the necklace) played larger roles in a longer edit of the film, and were carelessly cut out without concern for leaving audience expectations dangling.
On a plain acting level, Eddie Izzard was distinguished as Nina Jekyll, although I know her best from her comedy, so I was hoping and expecting that she would bring sparks of humor to the proceedings. But no, she played the role straight (pun largely unintended). Scott Chambers played Rob as sweet, too sweet to have gotten himself in all the trouble he gets into. (At least he fares better than his role in 2023’s Megalodon: The Frenzy, where he’s credited as “Jet Ski Victim.”)
Director Joe Stephenson appears to have no experience in horror films (a suspicion confirmed by the slightness of his IMDb page). On the plus side, cinematographer Birgit Dierken shoots Doctor Jekyll in a beautiful way, fully embracing the dark elegance of the mansion setting, the gothic shadows, and the creepy vibes of the story.
Doctor Jekyll is a good-looking, slow-burn horror film that, unfortunately, suffers from too many story problems to make it successful.
