Movie review: Blues for the Poe copycat in 'The Raven'

It’s hard to overstate the influence of Edgar Allan Poe to that niche of literary geeks known as horror fans. He casts a long, mustachioed shadow in the direction of anything grisly and macabre, illuminating the world through a pallbearer’s dark glasses. 

 

For me, his stories have given vent to many an angst-ridden fantasy. Who hasn’t entertained thoughts of violence against his boss, co-worker or rival? But after reading something like “The Cask of Amontillado,” where the protagonist bricks up his friend alive for an insult, your brain is floored into spewing its steam of hostility and fury at the sheer monstrosity of it. After that, well, it just kind of takes the wind out of your revenge plans.  

“The Raven” begins in blood, when police officers find a mother and daughter brutally murdered in imitation of a Poe story. The matron is sprawled on the floor, her throat sliced open and the corpse of her daughter has been painstakingly stuffed up inside the chimney. Head detective Emmet Fields (Luke Evans) subsequently discovers that Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” has been published in gory detail in the local papers.  

 

Meanwhile, Poe is already famous because of “The Raven,” but this never seems to translate monetarily for our beleaguered author. His dry credit line and lack of social skills gets him thrown out of a local pub for ragging the regulars and ranting his alcoholic, dirt poor, ink-stained heart out. The problem is Poe is also very much in love with Emily Hamilton (played by blonde hottie Alice Eve), the daughter of a rich Baltimore entrepreneur. They formulate plans to marry in spite of the fact that Emily’s father hates our poor writer’s guts. 

 

Soon enough, the police catch up to Poe and he’s brought for questioning by Fields as a suspect. Poe is aptly horrified to learn that someone is making his stories into reality. Fields is quick to take advantage of this by proposing the author become their investigative consultant.   

“The Raven” now becomes a roller coaster mystery thriller that puts Poe in the reluctant limelight as copycat headshrinker. Just in time, because another murder’s been discovered: Poe’s rival, the critic Griswold, has been cut in half. The copycat set up the elaborate construct of gears and pulleys required to pull off “The Pit and the Pendulum.” 

 

Director James McTeague reprises his atmospheric treatment of cities, like he did in “V for Vendetta,” and frames 19th century Baltimore as a metropolis caught in the throes of industrialization. The fog that permeates the scenes often looks like manufacturing debris, the shadowed, cobblestone streets of its night hold mysteries as well as terrors, and its citizens are either very destitute or very rich. McTeague’s visuals vacillate from the satirically rich (the annual masquerade ball of Baltimore’s high society), to the literally gloomy underworld (the waterworks of the city where someone’s been bricked up), bringing to life some of Poe’s most spooky stories in a lush pageant that Poe aficionados will relish.    

 

High points are also due to the actors like Eve (whose empowered damsel satisfyingly subverts the high society woman as victim image of the day) and Evans (who acts as the knight shown hell on earth). But excellent marks must especially be given to John Cusack who breathes life to the author’s quest to get inside the killer’s mind before time runs out.  

 

“John’s such a versatile actor,” said Luke Evans in praise of his co-star. “He’s worked on everything. When he took on the role of Poe, you can see from his performance in the film that he really did his work and he did a huge amount of research on the character of Poe and his personality and in the way he spoke and all the idiosyncrasies that made up Edgar Allan Poe.” 

 

The cat and mouse escalates when the killer kidnaps Emily and holds her as collateral to—believe you me—motivate Poe to chronicle all this down and publish it right away in the papers in a grisly fusion of fact and fiction.   

And that’s where the movie really shines: as an exciting narrative of Poe’s last week alive. Everyone knows he was found on a park bench, dead from causes not exactly known, but this alternate narrative supposes that he finally morphed into the heroic protagonist hinted at in his tales, albeit pushed and prodded by detective Fields, even going so far as to make a huge sacrifice. Though this is a traditional detective story with the culprit already among the on-screen cast, the pacing and suspense never let up, portraying the copycat as the worst kind of fan who wants to pay homage to his literary idol by making every one of his stories a chilling reality. Talk about hardcore fandom. 

 

Despite all these going for it, the reveal of the killer’s identity, the plot holes (in retrospect), and a general malaise of mistaking visual richness for narrative payoff leaves the viewer unsatisfied at the end. Poe’s death (and how it all happened) doesn’t strike you as warranted after all his efforts—even if we all know he’s going to kick the bucket. Beating the serial killer, even if Poe had to pay big time, must be more fulfilling and viscerally cathartic. 

 

I’ll leave you to find out just how Poe and his copycat eventually confront each other. But suffice to say, watch this for the way it brings stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart” or the lesser known "The Mystery of Marie Roget" to stunning and bloody life and appreciate it despite its prickly flaws. 

 

I would have liked to see “Silence: A Fable” made real, too, but that’s just one biblio-ghoul’s hankering. –KG, GMA News

 

“The Raven” opened May 23 in all Metro Manila theaters. Photos courtesy of Intrepid Pictures