“The Raven” was one of those movies that I have looked forward to watching since the day that I found out it was even being conceptualized. As a guy who has taken his fair share of writing and literature classes, Poe has always been one of my favorite authors to read and re-read. The idea of a movie involving Poe as an actual character and not just based from one if his creations was truly exciting on paper, unfortunately much like other things, this idea may not have been worth the paper it was printed on.
The Raven borrows its namesake, of course, from one of Poe’s most famous works, but make no mistake this is in no way anything more than a fictional take on Edgar’s last days on this earth which do remain somewhat of a mystery to this day. If you know the backstory for Poe’s death then the ending could be quite spoiled for you already if you are clever enough to put two and two together, but I will let you figure out the mystery on your own because it is actually a halfway decent story if you enjoy a good mystery.
We are greeted in the first frame by a Tarantino-esque showing of one of the final scenes of the movie before we backtrack to the beginning of the tale. The next scene is our introduction to the killer, at least to his crafty ways. Unfortunately this is also where John Cusack decided to channel Nic Cage in all of his over-acting glory as he is so far over the top that I began to wonder if Sly Stallone was going to appear like magic and challenge him to an arm wrestling match. I’m not sure if Johnny boy decided to really get into the role by getting a steady flow of drugs into his system, but he does at least settle down around the halfway mark and only has occasional flare ups throughout the remainder of the movie so if you can just make it through the first thirty minutes or so then you should be able to make it to the end without much prodding.
The biggest drawback to the movie is whether or not you can deal with the prevalence of bad acting performances. Personally I caught myself groaning more than a few times which is why ultimately I think that your enjoyment level for “The Raven” is going to boil down to your interest in Poe’s life and his works. Seeing “The Pit and the Pendulum” contraption be brought to life was one of the many nice touches thrown into the story. There are also nods to “The Cask of Amontillado” which is one of my personal favorites, and of course “The Raven” itself is referenced amongst a few of his lesser known works.
The story weaves and winds its way blending factual information with highly stylized fiction into what would have been a nice conclusion. An ending worthy of Poe himself, that is until the writers just could not help themselves and had to wrap everything up with a pretty little bow. It was actually disheartening for a movie that seemed to really want to capture the spirit of Poe’s depraved mind and generally less than tidy endings to take such an easy way out, but of course that is the weakness of storytelling in the modern age of everyone wanting a “happy ending” rather than the more interesting option.
Luke Evans and Alice Eve do play a nice counter-balance to John Cusack's rather cartoonish delivery but even they fall prey a few times to the bad acting bug which I would really place more blame on director James McTeigue than anyone. I realize that he did direct "V for Vendetta," but he also worked on The Matrix movies, Street Fighter, and Speed Racer so it isn't like he is the greatest judge of telling actors to tone it the fuck down.
Final verdict: save yourself the money and just wait for it to come to a redbox near you unless you are a huge Poe fan.
