The Limehouse Golem is called a horror film due to a few extreme gory and graphic murder scenes but all told it is a Sherlock Holmes-style murder mystery where the viewer is expected to figure out who the killer is whilst being led up the garden path by misleading reconstructions of the murders. It’s none the worse for this.

Victorian London is a place that regular viewers of TV dramas and cinema is now getting used to and the squalid underbelly her is shown to good effect, although everyone, once again, is probably a bit healthier and more bonny than what would be the real thing, but it is a drama, a film, entertainment, so this has to pass. Including, as the novel does, real Victorian characters, Dan Leno, Karl Marx and George Gissing, once again for clarity the timelines of these real people don’t tie up particularly the real Marx and Leno but this doesn’t distract from an interesting twist in the usual type of Victorian murder mystery.

Oliva Cooke plays the role of Lizzie Cree almost to perfection and certainly there is not a trace of the irritating vocal-fry the distracted so much in the TV production of Vanity Fair, her story is sordid, sad, vicious and interesting. Ably supported by the somewhat sonumbulistic and unemotive Bill Nighy and the ever stalwart Daniel Mays who could play his type of role in his sleep the film is in experienced and good hands. I couldn’t decide if Nighy was playing his character in this style or if he was picking up a cheque. To be fair to him it does work. Douglas Booth gives a strong performance as the Victorian superstar Dan Leno and the whole parts of the film involving the music-halls are lovely recreated, add into mix creepy Eddie Marsan and Maria Valverde and you do have a melodramatic grand guignol murder mystery. It’s always a matter of opinion but I think the film was created on the slightly over-the-top camp side to fit in the setting and story, if it was it works.

Overall The Limehouse Golem is a slice of horrific melodrama populated with good actors playing mysterious characters all apparently hiding their true selves from the world as the real Victorians did. The dark alleyways, murders and music-halls are all ticked off in compotent styles, the murders mysterious and gory and suspects many. If you looking for straightfoward entertainment with a darkside this could be the film for you.

Interestingly depending on your experience you make take a guess at the killer and get it right at various points throughout the film. It took my just over halfway through the film for the coin to drop, others I have read online less time and still others longer or not at all.

I would recommend The Limehouse Golem if you like your murky, gory, Victorian murder mysteries but if you are a bit blase about the genre and are looking for realistic representations of that period be warned you might get a bit peeved.