Review - The Raven

Grade: C

Full disclosure: I’ve loved Edgar Allan Poe’s work since my father gave an illustrated digest of some of Poe’s most famous short stories, so I’m more than a little partial to seeing Poe’s works given life on the big screen.

That said, James McTeigue’s (V for Vendetta) latest, The Raven, is a curious artifact. Reminiscent of a time in the late 90’s and early 00’s when a good old-fashioned mystery could put buts in the theater seats rather than in front of the tube, The Raven plays like a sluggish, faux pretentious knockoff of the the Hughes Brothers’ From Hell adaptation, complete with an anachronistic approach to social customs and forensics and an eccentric protagonist.

The Raven traces the supposed last days Poe’s, played with manic verbosity and comical arrogance by John Cusack, relentlessly tragic life, as he is thrust into an investigation, by dashing Baltimore Detective Fields (Luke Evans), of grisly murders based on his most famous short stories. Together, Poe, Fields, and Baltimore’s finest must rush to find the killer before Poe’s latest true love, the prim Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve), is buried alive. While mostly a Se7en for the Goth crowd--which seems redundant--The Raven spends a significant time establishing Poe as a simultaneously underrated and renowned genius who was barely keeping his life together before his demise, which may be accurate but nowhere near as glamourous as McTeigue makes it seem.

McTeigue does an adequate job of recreating 19th century Baltimore and giving it some of the same visual flourishes seen in the London-set opening of the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but he drops the ball on almost every other element, especially pacing. The Raven is a slog, dragging from scene to scene without any particularly inspired aesthetic, narrative, or thematic purpose. The weak pacing might not be a problem if the mystery at the core of The Raven wasn’t so patently uninspired. When the killer and their motivation are revealed, few members of the audience will be surprised or invested enough to care.

The performances in The Raven do little to elevate the flaccid material. Cusack spends more time running around like a verbose eccentric prone to delusions of grandeur and lacking an inside voice, a view of Poe which I would bet is based on a non-English major’s perception of all tortured writers. Cusack chomps through so much scenery that the rest of the cast barely registers. Luke Evans, the newest version of the Orlando Bloom heartthrob model, makes a noble effort to out-yell Cusack, but his role is little more than a stoic straight man to Cusack’s wacky genius--indeed, theirs is a partnership destined for Friday night slot on USA. Alice eve plays the classic damsel in distress with little uniqueness or polish while next big thing Oliver Jackson-Cohen and veterans like Brendan Gleeson and Mr. Gibbs (Kevin McNally) glower and bluster and the insane proceedings.

With its uninspired performances and sluggish approach to a fairly dated premise, The Raven is far from a must-see experience, and it will never be the type of movie high schoolers can use to avoid their American Literature homework. Yet, it may appeal to poor suckers, like me, who find re-imaginings of Victorian-era detectives and literary heroes to be vaguely fascinating, much like a well-reviewed, low-selling indie comic that captures a handful of readers before its unfortunate cancellation. The Raven may not be  for everybody, but the literature majors, remaining Goths, and those indigent souls who leave liquor at Poe’s grave every year will at least find it amusing.

Yin, Yang, and the In-Between

Yin: Cusack chomps scenery as a parody of Poe while Luke Evans and the cast do little to keep up; Uninspired mystery at the core will leave most viewers cold or asleep.

Yang: Like other recent cinematic adventures to the 19th century, fascinating as a comic-booky imagining of Poe’s as a Holmesian crime-solver.

In-Between: I’m dating myself, but remember Edgar Allan Poe from the Beetlejuice cartoon? As cartoony as this is, it somehow never comes close to that parody.