James McTeigue
The Raven

I'll break the ice right away with a confession: I liked this film. A lot, actually.

Now, we're not facing the film of the century. Nothing strikingly innovative, but without seeking innovation at all costs, nothing extraordinary even on a qualitative level.
Ok, the dark and gloomy settings in 19th century Baltimore are nice, but we've seen better. There's blood, and plenty of it: but even here, no rivers, no buckets of offal and sheep innards and cornflakes. An intriguing plot? Maybe; it keeps you in suspense but doesn't take off, you never find yourself with your heart in your throat: low potential suspense. In a film titled like a poem by Poe, one would expect a descent into the Maelstrom of the human mind, something that delves into the restless abysses, something that shows you the dark shadow you hide inside when you look in the mirror. None of this.

The plot is quite simple: there's a serial killer on the loose who kills following what's narrated in the stories of the great Poe. The writer is contacted by the police and agrees to collaborate with the cops when the killer openly challenges him and kidnaps his beloved. 

There you have it, nothing, NOTHING that you wouldn't find in dozens and dozens of other "thriller" or "detective" films. You might as well save eight euros (yes, it costs eight FUCKING euros to go to the cinema) and stay at home happily messing around, or you could go out and drink whisky and coke, go to a beautiful art exhibition and so on.

Exactly. If you've never read Edgar Allan Poe - and I mean really read, like devoured all his stories and similar stuff - you can stop reading here, the film won't drive you crazy, guaranteed, I mean yes, two pleasant hours but frankly meh, nothing special.

Conversely, if you have read Poe.

I mean truly if you have read Poe, like you've devoured all his stories. Well: then you'll find something extraordinary in this film.

Indeed, because good old McTeigue doesn't choose to create his Edgar Allan Poe as a sort of post-post-post-modern hero, like that ninja-genius-expert-in-everything that was Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (remember? Eh?). And he doesn't paint him as a dark cursed hero always frowning and at war with the world either.

This Edgar Allan Poe is described as a man. A man worried like everyone else about his problems. No mystical aura around him, no hero attributes. This Poe is exactly as he should have been, or rather as I imagine the real Edgar Allan Poe should have been. No evil grin mocking the entire world, no ace up his sleeve, no twist of fate like I've-tricked-you-when-you-thought-you-had-won. No brawls where he demonstrates he knows better. Just a writer in crisis - an imminent and human crisis - with alcohol problems. Eyes like a wounded fawn, eyes that reveal the true, great pain that the true great Poe must have felt. Sublime.