The Raven, Dir. James McTeigue

The Raven

Director: James McTeigue

Starring: John Cusack, Luke Evans

The Raven is not a horror film; I feel I need to stress that first and foremost. It has horrific elements (namely the script, the acting and the treatment of Edgar Allan Poe) but it’s not a horror story, it’s more of a gothic thriller/detective story.

For a gothic thriller it’s not very thrilling – the reveal at the end of the film is, as described by a character no less, not very exciting but at that point the entire thing has gone past formulaic and into tedious so no one-ones paying attention anyway. The murders themselves start out as exciting depictions of death well known from Poe classics like The Pit and The Pendulum and The Murders in the Rue Morgue and although fairly accurate realised murders they’re more Saw than literary imagining. The tie-in with Poe ends abruptly early on, as such it’s now just another murder story that has Edgar Allan Poe as the main character and tries desperately to maintain tenuous links with the real life of the writer. It doesn’t work very well.  

Do you remember when John Cusack used to be awesome: Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, his iconic Say Anything turn? Following Hot Tub Time Machine and The Raven I think it’s safe to say Cusack’s quirky, cult rep is officially dead. The only time he looked interested was when he directly quoted Poe. To a certain extent that is the fault of Hannah Shakespeare and Ben Livingston, two relatively obscure script-writers I only bothered to look up so I would have someone to blame. Ridiculous and ill-informed would go part of the way to describing a script that included an American use of the term ‘twat’ in 1849 and the term ‘going nuts’. Right, so research wasn’t high on the list then?

 It’s embarrassingly obvious that James McTeigue, the director, wanted this film to be 3D (…why?) the use of sweeping camera shots that pan up to uncomfortable aerial views and blood spraying directly at the screen as well as various weapons swinging in the audiences direction made it very clear they hoped they’d get the money to lay over the 3D post-production and some very wise exec told them no. It’s usually the best way to make a bad film worse i.e. Clash of the Titans, but in this case apparently the money would have been too much of a waste.

Something good? It’s quite gory, which I think people like nowadays. It probably introduced Poe to a new generation. And it included the insult “You’re a mad oyster!” I can’t think of anything else good to say, probably because there isn’t anything else good to say.

Oh and Luke Evans does a lot of shouting, like a lot of shouting in a really bizarre breathy voice. Not really sure what was going on with him to be honest but he figured out the whole mystery due to some magnetic ink so I can’t help but be impressed with his deductive reasoning. (Or psychic abilities.)

Basically, it was bad but if you’ve got nothing else to do and like making fun of bad scripts, this one’s for you. 

4/10