THE RAVEN

Director: James McTeigue

Screenplay: Ben Livingstone, Hannah Shakespeare
Starring: John Cusack, Alice Eve
The only one who can stop a serial killer is the one who inspired him

I’ve never been a big Edgar-Allan Poe aficionado, but I can’t recall any details in his life that refer to him having a pet raccoon (that chows down on a human heart), or that he wrote front-page reports on a serial killer in Baltimore during 1849 …Nevertheless, here it is.



“The Raven” has just been released on region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK, after a very brief spell at the cinemas.

The premise is promising. A serial killer is modelling himself on some of Poe’s literary characters, and performing grisly murders in the style of his books. There’s a “locked-room” murder a’ la “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and a murder with a swinging axe pendulum like “The Pit and the...” well you get the picture.



Meanwhile Ed Poe (John Cusack) is behaving like an annoying lush around the town (seemingly just for the sake of it) and in pursuit of Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve). Detective Fields (Luke Evans) has realised the link between Poe and the murders and ropes him into the investigation, until the murders hit too close to home …



John Cusack as Poe? Buddy cop film set in 19th Century USA? Grisly serial killer basing his work on classic literary works? Sounds good right? Should at least be a guilty pleasure? Hmmm … Not so much.

The main problem is that it’s really none of the above. The tone veers wildly from character study, to detective film, to period romp, and never really settles in one direction.



Cusack is as watchable as always, but he never really convinces as Poe. Some scenes are seemingly strewn with bizarre vocabulary (What the hell is a “mental oyster”?) and emotional outbursts, merely to give Cusack something to chew on.



Eve is a little disappointing as well, switching from insipid to amazingly resilient, with nothing in-between. Luke Evans actually gives a calm measured performance that befits his character.

James Mcteague’s direction is okay, and the first 30 minutes contains some inspired imagery (a tracking shot backwards through a keyhole as it is locked) and some surprising full-on scenes with the murders (The pendulum being a highlight, despite the obvious CGI).



If there had been more concentration on this element of the narrative, then it would have been a lot more enjoyable. Instead, the murderer stomps around various areas, like some early version of “The Shadow” and leaves clues that are more obtuse and confusing than the ones in the old “3-2-1” quiz show. You can’t help thinking that if this element had been evolved more and more had been made of Poe’s detective instincts, and then it could have been a bit of gem to watch.



Instead, the police continually take pot-shots at the killer, and prove to be worst marksman than the storm-troopers in “Star Wars”!

The one point I was impressed with, is that the story does tie in with Poe’s apparent final words, so somebody had obviously checked their wiki entries…

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Okay for Cusack fans or horror/thriller fans looking for a slightly unusual period tale, set against historical characters but it could’ve been much better though. A C-minus for Poe.