L'Ombre du mal

A horror/crime movie that had the potential to be either a narratological treat (conversion of fiction into reality and vice versa) or the trash flick of the year (bloody killings, a woman in peril, a hard-drinking protagonist). It ultimately turns out to be an arduously mechanical pile of motifs from the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The means of solving the mystery is the author himself, who on several occasions advises the detective on what the murderer is hinting at with which clue, so that the investigators can then join forces and with tremendous accuracy deduce the direction that their investigation should take (the succinctness of the “logical” inferences is in some way reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code). The main storyline is not intertwined with the themes of Poe’s stories, which are simply tossed into it. One Poe allusion is displaced by the next, instead of them being linked together and ultimately leading to the arrest of the murderer, which diminishes the pleasure that comes with the gradual revealing of the truth. In the end, the truth just simply appears. On top of that, every transfer of Poe’s theory into practice is assigned by the characters to a particular literary work, sometimes with a brief historical explanation, so that we can’t even take pleasure from our own knowledge of which source the filmmakers are drawing from. The dynamic link between the author and his work, which in this case is the murderer himself, offers a wealth of supporting themes, but the screenwriters were not able to develop any of them in any sensible way. Nor do they make any attempt to confuse us with the possibility that the author himself might be capable of murder, as his inner demons are very tame due to the spasmodic, forcibly implemented romantic subplot. The more the screenplay tries to characterise Poe on multiple levels, the less convincing the protagonist becomes, so the most entertaining thing here is the initial demo version of the caustic and self-centred alcoholic. A less straightforward approach to the concept of “a film based on motifs from the books of Edgar Allan Poe” is only indicated in the final dialogue scene, which raises the question of who actually the author is and who the reader is. Instead of a well-thought-out game with multiple narrators, of whose rules Poe had a masterful command, McTeigue offers us only a very uninventive and not very dark detective story with a few unnecessary forays into gore and action scenes whose presence could be excused only by a more daring comic-book stylisation (the film wants to look a bit like Sleepy Hollow, but there apparently was no money left over for colour grading in post-production). 50% (23/04/2012)

I wanted to watch The Raven mainly because of the actor, who has been keeping on surprising me lately. Luke Evans was able to put on a show in this movie, too, and he definitely won me over because of it. If I should compare the movie itself to something, it would probably be Anonymous. Because The Raven is a sort of pseudo-historical Edgar Allan Poe’s biopic. But it doesn’t tell his own story, it connects the stories of his individual tales. One murder = one tale. But as a whole, it gives away Edgar, his personality, his opinions and convictions that managed to seep into his tales. And I must say that I loved the idea. The atmosphere of old Baltimore was dark enough and at the same time, I didn’t mind that the entire movie was filmed in Europe, quite the opposite. The only problem with this movie that I minded a lot was the ending. Considering how well the story was developing, the ending has cut it in quite a hard-lined manner. I just wish that a story like this could get a downright epic ending. In the end, I got a rather intimate death acceptance. But that’s probably how it was supposed to be… (01/04/2014)

It's not completely bad and quite entertaining because it's short, lively, and musically properly dramatic. While the killer can be guessed after a few minutes and everything is basically predictable from beginning to end, it can be managed once thanks to those few camera tricks and fantastic sound and sound effects. There is a certain directorial inexperience and immaturity visible, but The Silence of the Lambs won't be repeated just like that. (07/12/2012)

The overacting Cusack, the post-production winds with utter social consciousness through a ridiculously dark Burton-esque Baltimore among half-dimensional characters, tediously rendered murders, and the twists and turns of a totally moronic script that gives the impression that every page was written by a different person with no knowledge of the rest of the story. Which is to say that every now and then, when you give the film some grace, an atmospherically pleasant scene materializes, only to get suddenly fucked up by some horrible 3D effect. Plus, the main protagonist somehow always gives the impression that Nicolas Cage wasn’t available (which sounds hard to believe, of course), and in general the more I write about this movie, the more it pisses me off. (02/10/2012)

I really lacked suspense. Otherwise, more or less everything was right in The Raven. The great quirky John Cusack, good period atmosphere lightened by humor in the right places, impressive murder scenes (entering a locked room, maybe the pendulum was a little too bloody). The story was less uneven than I expected, but as I already said - there was no suspense, which is unforgivable in a film that pays tribute to a pioneer of this genre. Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (the first one) wins in this respect. However, compared to the recent garbage Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Raven is still an above average spectacle. Three and a half. (02/12/2012)