The Raven (2012)

What makes The Raven such a tasty midnight watch is how it turns Edgar Allan Poe himself into a character inside a Poe story—foggy streets, candlelit rooms, and a killer staging murders with the theatrical cruelty of the author’s own imagination. James McTeigue shoots 19th-century Baltimore with handsome, storybook gloom, and the period costumes and sets give the film a tactile, lavish elegance even when things turn grisly. John Cusack plays Poe with a wounded, prickly charm, while Luke Evans grounds the chase with steady resolve, and the whole thing moves at a brisk, propulsive clip that keeps you leaning forward. It is undeniably violent and a bit pulpy in its pleasures, so if you’re allergic to R-rated serial-killer nastiness you may want to pass, but if you’re in the mood for a stylish, literate-leaning thriller, it’s a smartly mounted ride.

The Raven wants to be a dark, pulpy “Poe meets serial-killer procedural,” mixing literary in-jokes with a grimy Victorian chase, and you can feel the movie straining for gothic prestige. The problem is the script is too thin to sell the increasingly preposterous twists, so what should be eerie often plays more like a loud, grisly theme-park ride with uneven performances trying to force seriousness. If you’re protective of Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy or you need a mystery that’s clever and tightly plotted, this will likely irritate you more than it thrills you. That said, the period atmosphere is decent, the murders are memorably nasty (it is very R-rated), and if you’re in the mood for schlocky, fast-moving horror-adjacent crime entertainment, you might still get some guilty-fun mileage out of it.