Crazy To See: THE RAVEN

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Synopsis: When a mother and daughter are found brutally murdered in 19th century Baltimore, Detective Emmett Fields makes a startling discovery: the crime resembles a fictional murder described in gory detail in the local newspaper—part of a collection of stories penned by struggling writer and social pariah Edgar Allan Poe. But even as Poe is questioned by police, another grisly murder occurs, also inspired by a popular Poe story. Realizing a serial killer is on the loose using Poe’s writings as the backdrop for his bloody rampage, Fields enlists the author’s help in stopping the attacks. But when it appears someone close to Poe may become the murderer’s next victim, the stakes become even higher and the inventor of the detective story calls on his own powers of deduction to try to solve the case before it’s too late. (Relativity Media)

CRITICS CONSENSUS: CRAZY TO SEE

  1. When I heard that John Cusack had been cast for this film, it sounded like good news: I could imagine him as Poe, tortured and brilliant, lashing out at a cruel world. But that isn’t the historical Poe the movie has in mind. It is a melodramatic Poe, calling for the gifts of Nicolas Cage.
  2. The Raven is period piece fun – at least until it realizes there has to be a conclusion. That’s where a certain amount of inevitable disappointment sets in. The curse of the two-hour murder mystery is that the ending never seems to justify the build-up.
  3. Cusack captures that desperation vividly enough to make you wish this was the real Poe story, which The Raven onscreen leaves buried alive.
  4. The story has its moments, and yet there is something about this tale of a serial killer’s patterning his crimes on Poe’s most gruesome works that doesn’t completely satisfy.
  5. A grimly preposterous serial-killer thriller set in 19th-century Baltimore, this riff on the final days of the author of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and other masterpieces of the macabre might qualify as literary desecration if it weren’t so silly.
  6. This may conjure up unpleasant memories of Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” movies, but Ritchie could learn a lot from director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta); this is multiplex fare to be sure, but McTeigue manages to popularize 19th-century literature without completely vulgarizing it.
  7. This many-feathered animal occasionally soars before it crash-lands.
  8. Befitting a film about Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven is dark and grisly and ghoulish. But it also has qualities that Poe’s work never does: It’s dull and mechanical and, most of all, phony.
  9. The Raven tries to blend all of these motley genres together, and though the effort is valiant, the result is a mess. I suspect Poe’s review of it would have been much more savage than mine.
  10. The Raven squanders a promising scenario while half-burying Cusack’s mercurial skills as a leading man with the wiles of a character actor.
  11. The pervasive gore overpowers the few clumsy attempts at wit here, though the film does have one funny line. As one of Poe’s literary rivals watches a razor-edged pendulum slice into his abdomen, the man screams in protest: “But I’m only a critic!”
  12. This wannabe Sherlockian thriller is like a night spent at Madame Tussauds, watching mannequins strangle other mannequins.
  13. Poe was a flawed figure, but his greatest strength was in avoiding convention, or reinterpreting it to create something new. The Raven aspires to both, but abandons those ambitions to lie limply on the floor – only this, and nothing more.
  14. The Raven isn’t nearly as much fun as it should be.
  15. Besides being an author, Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most vicious, merciless critics of his age. He would not have let this get past him without skewering its shortcomings with a barbed quill.
  16. The Raven is a squawking, silly picture that never takes flight.
  17. It runs out of steam in the final 10 minutes, but there’s some gruesome drama and Cusack is on decent form.
  18. While full of welcome gore and blood spatter, it’s bankrupt of any creative spark.
  19. As implausible as the stars’ gleaming choppers.
  20. John DeFore
    Director James McTeigue was much more successful capturing graphic novelist Alan Moore’s mood in “V for Vendetta” than he is conjuring the bone-chilling suspense of Poe. But viewed as simply another Hollywood thriller, The Raven builds up a decent head of steam as time runs out for our hero’s imperiled fiancee.

Source : MetaCritic