Flick Flak: The Raven
The Raven
Director: James McTeigue
With: John Cusack, Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson
15, 111mins
The Raven was one of the most frustrating films I've seen for ages. Rather than being able to enjoy it, as I expected to, I spent the entire running time puzzling over how on earth they'd managed to make it so boring.
On paper it sounded almost perfect for me - Gothic period setting, serial killer mystery, and the brilliant John Cusack. But despite these ingredients the film just didn't succeed on any level.
The plot sees Edgar Allan Poe (Cusack) vastly under-appreciated in his own time and struggling to fund his drinking habits. Despite this he's managed to convince an upper-class beauty to marry him, at least, until she's taken by a man who is murdering people in a grim homage to Poe's writings.
What it did have going for it was the setting - foggy cobbled streets, foggy churchyards, tunnels and costume balls. 1849 Baltimore was entirely convincing on screen. Also having reasonable success in their endeavours were Brendan Gleeson (though much of his natural charisma was stifled somehow), Alice Eve (heaving bosoms ahoy from an actress on the up) and Luke Evans as the very earnest Detective Fields.
However, the one guy I would have put money on to make the movie entertaining let me down. John! What happened? I want to assume it was a duff script (which it was), but you can usually count on Cusack to make even the dullest character likeable and witty (see Runaway Jury). In The Raven he barely manages to raise a smile, which is frankly upsetting given how much I like him. With his lover kidnapped and used as a pawn to force him to write new horror tales, you imagine Poe should be descending into a madness of grief and panic; instead he occasionally gets really angry at random moments. However, probably the most atmospheric part of the film is John Cusack reciting Poe's The Raven. Just goes to show, they don't write like that any more.
The other main problem is that the film is just boring. It takes something special to take Poe's The Pit And The Pendulum and make it dull rather than horrifying, but this film managed it. I imagine the inherent horror of that story is the drawn-out tension of the narrator watching the pendulum tick towards him: The Raven sees a man sawn in half by the pendulum in about three minutes.
It really is difficult to be constructive in criticising The Raven. It's boring, but I can't really say why. The murder mystery plot is mysterious, but you just don't really care who the killer is. There are mildly exciting moments, for instance when a masked horseman crashes into a costume ball, or a blind shootout in foggy woods. But they are over all too quickly, and you're dumped back into the tedium of the story.
Deeply disappointing considering how good it looked on paper. Bad John. I expect better from you.
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