It's great to see Tony Todd get the leading role in a film - it's just too bad that film had to be this one. He almost carried it off by his charisma alone, despite the script - until the ending, which is just lame, over-the-top, clichéd, and pretty much just awful. Makeup artist turned director John Carl Buechler has a lot to learn about making decent movies. The budget is low ($750,000), but I doubt Buechler could have done much better with ten times that amount.
Tony Todd plays the newest incarnation of Dr. Jekyll. This time, he's a research scientist experimenting with nanotechnology in the medical field. Having successfully treated a chimpanzee with a weak heart, he secretly begins treating himself, as well, knowing that his own bad heart cannot possibly keep beating for the three years of continued experimentation required by the FDA. This involves injecting himself with a green serum - no bubbling concoctions here. The treatment does work, of course, because the man's still alive. On the other hand, the side effects are rather extreme, turning Jekyll into a badly made-up Edward Hyde who enjoys murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia. Jekyll tries to clean up all of Hyde's messes, even passing Hyde off as a valued colleague doing invaluable work in the lab for him, but this can only go on so long. The cops are after an insane killer, Jekyll's colleagues - especially the females - want Hyde fired, and the good doctor is clearly losing what little control he has left.
It's amazing to see Hyde walk around in public, stalking his victims. Grown men should run screaming at the sight of this dude, but he never seems to attract any attention at all. Todd's performance as Jekyll isn't all that great, either. It's as if he's going to great lengths to be as aloof and weird as possible. Then you have Tracy Scoggins' lackluster performance as the female detective refusing her boss's demands to wear her gun because of some accident that killed her old partner. One review I read said Scoggins looks like a retired hooker in this role, and I have to say that is spot on. This whole movie is a pretty unappealing spectacle, especially the ending. Tony Todd is still the man - he just needs better roles than this one.
