"The Raven" (2012)

It is a fascinating mystery: the death of Edgar Allen Poe. As with all unsolved deaths involving celebrities, especially suspicious deaths involving someone like Poe who made a living from the macabre, we love to speculate. Many a work of fiction has been inspired by such events. Of course, a big part of the allure with such stories is the unknown. Once you answer that question, you remove a great part of what makes these stories interesting to people. After all, we already know how the story ends. So, your proposed explanation had better be interesting in its own right.


With “The Raven” that is just the start of their problems. Poe’s death might have made a great starting point. We could have had one of his contemporaries trying to solve the mystery. Instead, we get Poe working with the police to solve a series of murders, only to meet his end in the way that we all know was coming. To make matters worse, we get a thoroughly unlikable Poe. (Even if that is an accurate portrayal, it doesn’t make this story more compelling.) There is too much gore here for those who don’t like horror, and too little for those attracted to such things. There is not enough mystery for this to be a detective story, and it is too brooding for this to be an action piece.

This is an obvious attempt to repeat the sort of story that Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” told, but even the sequel to that movie failed, so maybe trying and failing is not something we should hold against this film.

It is ultimately an ok movie, but forgettable.