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The Limehouse Golem never pulls story together

The Limehouse Golem . Directed by Juan Carlos Medina. Starring Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke.
Limehouse Golem
The Limehouse Golem is now on screen at the Park Theatre.

The Limehouse Golem. Directed by Juan Carlos Medina. Starring Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke. Rating: 6 (out of 10)

Bill Nighy stars as Inspector John Kildare, a man thrown into a multiple homicide investigation, presumably to take the fall for the higher-ups at Scotland Yard.

 Kildare would have risen up the ranks if not for his rumoured proclivity for members of his own sex, a plot element that – like many – evaporates in the ether. The murder of a family and the family maid is only the latest in a string of grisly and seemingly random murders in the Limehouse borough of east London; the killer is nicknamed “golem” – Hebrew for automaton, artificial man – after dismembering the member of a Jewish scholar.

Loosely linked to the serial killer is Lizzie Cree (Olivia Cooke), a young woman whose husband is added to the list of possible suspects right around the time that he is found poisoned in his bed. Lizzie is the product of a horrific childhood (recounted so briefly I’m still not entirely sure what happened), is orphaned at age 14, and then finds solace in the theatre where she is adopted by the raggedy panto crowd, including Eddie Marsan, whom everyone calls “uncle”. Her particular hero is local star Dan Leno (Douglas Booth of Romeo and Juliet, And Then There Were None), whose performance bookends the film.

Lizzie plays a man onstage, Dan wears a dress, and brutality crosses ages, classes and genders. There are lofty bits and pieces culled from Peter Ackroyd’s 1994 murder mystery: quotes by Lactantius and Alexander Pope, while philosopher Karl Marx (Henry Goodman) and prolific writer George Gissing (Morgan Watkins) are named as possible suspects.

Now widowed, Lizzie rises from dockside rat to semi-respectable lady of the manor married to John Cree (Sam Reid) in a house with plenty of secrets of its own. John forbade his wife from treading the boards ever again: was it enough for her to murder him? Or was it their lady’s maid-cum-concubine?

All of these suppositions are told via memory and flashback, sometimes with the killer using a voice filter that’s irritatingly Darth Vader-like in its delivery. Director Juan Carlos Medina barely gives us enough time to anchor ourselves in the present before tossing us back and forth between time periods, leaving no time at all for the audience to invest in his characters. 

Kildare expends so much energy attempting to prove that Lizzie is innocent of poisoning her husband that he nearly forgets to solve the crime plaguing the streets of London. Not to worry: “we’re all part of London’s tapestry,” he says, “sometimes threads get crossed.” He and sidekick Flood (Daniel Mays) don’t seem to spend that much time together, nevertheless Flood risks all by hinting that he’s on Kildare’s side of the rumours, wink wink. Constable Flood is the warmest character in the film: more scenes between he and Kildare would’ve been most welcome.

Cooke, of Me And Earl And The Dying Girl fame, gives a darkly effective performance as Lizzie; Nighy’s Kildare remains a nut we wish we could crack. The murders are gruesome and artful and production design is top-notch, but we’d trade some of it in a heartbeat for a little less “golem” and a little more living, breathing soul in the script.