The Raven

The title card that opens The Raven tells us that the events of the several days before Edgar Allan Poe was found incoherent on 3 October 1849 remain a mystery. This gives license to director James McTeigue and his screenwriter to invent tales as they will. And they did.

Police respond to the screams of a woman emanating from a shabby tenement but they arrive too late. She is the victim of a grisly murder, her neck slashed so deeply that it leaves her head dangling by the thinnest of threads. Stuffed into the chimney is her young daughter's body. The men in blue are baffled as the door was locked from the inside and the window was nailed shut. All notions of diablerie are dispelled when Detective Fields shows up and discovers that the window was not really nailed shut and instead had spring-loaded locks – just as in a dark tale by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".

For his part, Poe is out indulging his alcoholism by begging for a drink at a local tavern while at the same time letting loose his sardonic tongue which gets him thrown out of the establishment. The next day he visits the offices of The Baltimore Patriot where he finds out that his latest bit of criticism was not published. No paycheck and he is broke. At least he has his love Emily Hamilton, although her father has no love lost for the humble author.

Fields brings Poe into the station ostensibly as a suspect but soon enlists him as a fellow investigator when a second body turns up, this time sliced in two by an enormous pendulum as in his "The Pit and the Pendulum". The hunt is now on for the fiend who is looking to Poe's stories for loathsome inspiration.

Emily's father is preparing for his annual masquerade ball which prompts Fields and Poe to fear that the murderer will attempt to kill again in imitation of "The Masque of the Red Death". Police are on hand but they are unable to foil the killer's plan and dear Emily is kidnapped. The murders continue and the race is on to save Poe's dulcinea who finds herself in a casket buried in a shallow grave.

The Raven reminded me a bit of Se7en, the latter being a favorite of mine. Instead of the 7 Deadly Sins, the murderer here uses Poe's stories and the hero's love interest becomes a target in both. Plus the films have a similar aesthetic. The decaying city in Se7en was shot by Darius Khondji to be a drab place, full of browns and greens. Here Danny Ruhlmann composes The Raven with lots of blacks and greys. Both films have had color leeched from their frames. Poe and Fields have a very different relationship than Somerset and Mills, however.

They make a good team but The Raven is a straightforward murder mystery so there's precious little character development. Fields shows himself early on to be a rational man unwavering in the pursuit of justice and truth. Poe, on the other hand, begins the film as a haughty braggart who is a close acquaintance of John Barleycorn. But, when Emily's life is imperiled, he finds courage that doesn't come in a bottle and the willingness to sacrifice of himself.

All in all, The Raven is pretty by-the-numbers stuff. You've got your mystery and your male hero saving the girl. Ruhlmann's cinematography was plenty moody if a bit hokey in a couple spots (Where'd the light in the casket come from? How can Emily see walls when the casket faces upwards?) And the references to Poe's stories are a nice touch. While there's nothing special about The Raven, it was good fun.