Sherlock Holmes and the Shadow Watchers

When you get something like this, you have to give allowances. No money was spent; friends did the acting. Production is brusque.

What you have to look for is the intent of the writer/director/main actor. If he could have, would he have delivered a film that mattered? Well, he started with Holmes, one of the best places to start. And he enters what already qualifies as a subgenre of Holmes solving the Jack the Ripper case.

But alas, the story template is rolled out from the many previous films with nothing new. The perspective has no folds, no irony, comment or annotation. It really seems as if he wanted to create a genuine Holmes detective story.

There is essentially no deduction here, only discovery. We see little of what develops in terms of cause; it is explained instead. This filmmaker is off to a poor start, I am afraid and is likely to be an early, gruesome victim of the business.