Oh, poor Baltimore! Oh, poor Edgar Allan Poe! The city that's been home to some of the most complex crime procedurals in television and movie history, along with its most beloved resident this side of Ray Lewis, have now been forced into an idiotic, sketchy, paint-by-numbers murder mystery that doesn't know if it wants to be campy or painfully serious. Here's a tip: It should've been the former.
You can have a lot of fun playing up Poe, the inventor of the modern detective mystery, as a gumshoe looking to solve a string of copycat murders. It's been done before by better film makers, but with the overrated James McTeigue on board and a hackneyed script, nothing good was going to come out of this effort. John Cusack seems to have noticed which way the wind was blowing right from the start, as he puts in a half-hearted performance, playing Poe as a sleepy eyed lout who uses the word "abject" way too often. Supposedly this is meant to be funny or something? Cusack imbues Poe with zero humanity, and less of the genius we saw in his work.
The story takes place in those mysterious last few days of Poe's life, as his career had long since peaked, and was reduced to writing criticism(*gasp*) to earn a living. An arrogant, loud mouthed alcoholic, Poe needs as much money as possible if he's ever going to marry the beautiful Emily Hamilton(Alice Eve). Unfortunately, his writing doesn't sell papers, so he gets a much needed, but unwanted, boost when grisly murders start popping up all around town, each bearing the trademark of his greatest horror stories. After being labeled a suspect by the personality deprived Inspector Fields(Luke Evans), Poe instead puts his intimate knowledge of death to good use in capturing the killer, spurred on by Emily's capture and potential demise.
McTeigue has been living off his start as a colleague of The Wachowskis during their time on The Matrix, but his solo films leave much to be desired. For all the praise people heap on V for Vendetta, it's a dark, emotionless, poorly staged film that ekes by solely on Hugo Weaving's cool mask and the shock of Natalie Portman's bald head. The version of Baltimore McTeigue creates for The Raven has no life, no soul. McTeigue seems to think if he just shoots the film a bit darker, that somehow means he's creating a gloomier complexion. No, it's just incentive to take a nap. McTeigue does deserve credit for the hideous "Pit and the Pendulum" death scene, which is as gruesome as you might expect. The only thing that hurts it is the terrible looking CGI blood that McTeigue is just obsessed with.
Unfortunately there isn't much more to get excited over. Poe and Fields run all over town looking clueless while the killer stays one step ahead of them. It's almost as if the writers(one of whom has the last name of "Shakespeare") saw the last two Sherlock Holmes movies and said "We can do that too!" Sure you can....only in a less interesting, far less successful way. The script is light on laughs, despite Poe's constant yelling and bragging, and way too bleak and droll.
One thing that is done right is the public perception of critics back during Poe's time. Criticism was indeed considered the least respectable form of writing, much as it is today. McTeigue seems to take special delight in this fact, however, as they are singled out for ridicule and suffer the worst deaths of all in the film. It's possible he's making some sort of statement against the firestorm of bad reviews that he knows are coming. Well you can add this one to the list.
