"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting -
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
Poet, short story writer, critic, alcoholic, alleged necrophiliac - Edgar Allan Poe was many things. What he wasn't was a man who hunted down a serial killer who bumped off people using methods described in his acclaimed stories.
This, though, is the basis of The Raven, the third film from James McTeigue, the Australian director of V For Vendetta. As for the troubled writer, he's played by High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank star John Cusack. Luke Evans (Immortals, Clash Of The Titans), meanwhile, plays the Baltimore detective who helps Poe hunt down the murderer, while Alice Eve (Starter For 10, Entourage) essays the young woman who captures the author's feted heart.
With the atmospheric trailer suggesting a film in the tradition of Angel Heart, there seemed reason to be optimistic about The Raven. But while the supporting cast of Pam Ferris (Children Of Men), Kevin McNally (the Pirates Of The Caribbean series) and Brendans Gleeson (The Guard) and Coyle (Downton Abbey) is superb, there’s a real feeling of an opportunity being missed here.
Is Cusack an unusual choice to essay Poe? Yes, and despite his best efforts, he comes up a little short. The real problem, though, is that there’s enough in the real Poe’s backstory - his West Point education; his creation of the modern-day detective story - to fuel an interesting tale without saddling the story with a Se7en-styles serial killer, bumping off people using methods from the author’s short stories.
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven