Movies News Talk
With Eddie Izzard playing the title role, the 2023 adaptation of Doctor Jekyll offers a distinctive take on the traditional horror story. The main character of the movie is transgender woman Dr. Nina Jekyll, who battles her evil, deadly alter ego, Rachel Hyde. Even though Izzard's magnetic performance and the fascinating way the classic Jekyll and Hyde story explores gender identity, the film ultimately falls short because it doesn't properly explore the consequences of its transgender protagonist.
The venerable horror film studio Hammer Film Productions has a history of examining gender issues in the context of the Jekyll and Hyde franchise. In their 1971 adaptation, Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde, a male Jekyll takes hormones and becomes a female Hyde. Although the film made use of the shock value associated with gender transformation, the 2023 adaptation strives for a more subtlety. The film's vagueness regarding Nina's gender identity, however, makes viewers wonder about its real goals.
Though dialogue in the movie makes references to Nina's history, it never says outright that she transitioned. A quick glimpse of media clippings during the title sequence, with one headline reading "Trans CEO Jekyll Accused Of Abuse," alluded to Nina's decline from grace. There's tension in the movie between trying to show a complicated character and relying too heavily on a potentially problematic stereotype because of this blatant reference to Nina's transgender identity.
Horror Movies have a disturbing history of using transgender people's misperception and terror to create cheap shocks. Gender non-conformity is detrimentally stereotyped since classic examples such as Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs employ it as a shorthand for villainy. The ambiguity surrounding Nina's gender identity in Doctor Jekyll raises worries about a potential subconscious reinforcement of these problematic themes, even as the picture avoids the overt transphobic stereotypes found in previous films.
Gender transformation and Jekyll's dual personality offer a thematically connected opportunity to delve deeply into the intricacies of identity, self-discovery, and social pressures. By showing Hyde as a metaphor for a suppressed and misunderstood version of himself rather than as a real monster, the movie might have disrupted the conventional horror trope. Nevertheless, Doctor Jekyll is unable to explore these depths, therefore Nina's transgender identity is only briefly and shallowly explored.
Doctor Jekyll establishes an environment in which the audience is continuously aware of Nina's transgender identity by making reference to it directly in the opening sequence. There is a feeling of unfinished business since the movie seems reluctant to address this head-on. The film is entertaining to see, but its potential impact is ultimately diminished by the lack of research surrounding Nina's transgender identity, despite Eddie Izzard's compelling performance.
Within the horror genre, Doctor Jekyll is a lost opportunity to address a complicated and subtle problem. Due to its ambiguity, the movie raises questions in the minds of viewers about its goals and its ability to advance a more accepting and cognizant portrayal of transgender identities. Ultimately, Doctor Jekyll resorts to well-known narrative devices rather than audaciously challenging the problematic clichés of the past, leaving viewers with more questions than solutions.