The Raven
User Score
6.4 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 78 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 58 out of 78
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 78
  3. Negative: 7 out of 78

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  1. btemp
    May 23, 2012
    4
    Incredibly boring movie that has many plot and filming flaws. Its a significantly watered down Sherlock Holmes that leaves you neither caring for the victim or the villain - quite seriously. At no point do you go... hmm, who is this bad guy? Also, Cusack plays a bad alcoholic. I hate to say this, but he could take lessons from Downey Jr.
  2. ZombosCloset
    Apr 30, 2012
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. After the promising opening moments of James McTiegue's The Raven are spent with anxious constables rushing to find slashed bodies in a locked room, and the entrance of Inspector Fields (Luke Evans), who approaches the conundrum like Auguste Dupin, John Cusack's Edgar Allan Poe chews the scenery with his superficial temper tantrums and clumsy gyrations, pulled by contrivance instead of subtextual motivations. For god's sake, didn't Cusack and the writers know Poe was a tortured soul with layers of spiritual complexity? Where's the empty pit of isolation and the breadth of despair he suffered through his boozing and melancholy? Yelling the word "f*ck" is not a suitable drama substitute. If only the real Poe could have lent a hand. I'm sure his dialog would have been richer and more sensible, and his suspense would have been palpable as well as plausible. Plausibility is a good place to start since this movie adds little of it to tie its sensational events together. A wonderful premise brimming with potential limps instead from indecisive contextual stability as it purloins stock slasher and serial killer tidbits, piecemeal, without understanding their cumulative effect. It's almost like Saw in gruesomeness scale--the strikingly gory pendulum slice and dice on the rotund Rufus Griswold (John Warnaby)--then restrains its visual assault like Horrors of the Black Museum, then jumps from left to right to be similar to Se7en's broader cat and mouse conceit. Each staged execution of Poe's devilish demises by the villain is handled like a fast-food order without condiments, even if imaginatively far-fetched clues propel Poe and Fields one step closer to finding who that killer is and his motive; both of which appear on script cue out of thin air for the denoument's wrap-up, without any explicit or implied discernment along the way to prepare us for the revelation. It just happens. Leading up to this, Poe rants, raves, throws his ego all around, sulks, and looks for his next drink--until his mind clears enough to recognize the clues being left behind; Fields, emotionless, analytical, dissects the problem methodically until he develops brain freeze, allowing Poe's now clear mind to take the lead; the blustery Captain Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson) hates Poe--who wants to marry Hamilton's daughter--until the captain becomes conciliatory and friend to Poe to help solve anothe clue, even though it's Poe's stories that have buried his daughter alive and all of them desperately trying to find her. Hamilton's daughter Emily (Alice Eve) loves Poe, but aside from an out of place allusion about him giving good head, made during an overly long and lifeless romantic interlude, why she would like a destitute, alcoholic, and egotistical ass such as Poe is portrayed is not clear. Her wispy and cold presence in every scene blends into the upholstery much of the time, so unless Poe is infatuated with sitting on her, I'm at a loss to understand the attraction they have. Even when she's clawing at the coffin she's buried in, she's as cold as a corpse already.

    Then there are the vexing facts in the case of the uneven interior lighting from scene to scene. We go from moody interiors correctly matched with their dim gaslight and oil lamp sources to spectrums of bright white, impossible to be produced by the lamplight available, sandwiched between a few suitably bleak, mist-shrouded exteriors: a memorable chase under a gray sky and through a foggy, barren, forest brings to mind The Fall of the House of Usher.

    Not much else is memorable except for the murder by pendulum. Its intensity is surprising given the duller deliveries of the subsequent murders. I'm not sure if practical effects were united with digital, but watching that enormous blade slice through Griswold's belly, him screaming, it cutting deeper with each notch of its giant gears rolling into place, all that blood and glistening chunks of visceral meat splashing wildly, and the blade finally bisecting Griswold into two lifeless parts as it comes to rest, stuck into the wooden table between them, is breathtakingly disturbing, but oddly out of place here. I wondered how the villain managed to build such an immense, clockwork precise contraption by himself. Poe even remarks he hadn't imagined the counterweight to be so large when he sees it.

    I'm torn myself between loving and hating it, given the rest of this movie.    … Expand
  3. Covino
    Apr 30, 2012
    0
    I can't in good conscience countenance any flick that so blatantly rips off a Poe-inspired novel's essential plot and premise. And then simply transports said plot and premise from the novel's original contemporary setting in San Francisco to its fabricated period piece location of Baltimore. But the ripped off plot and premise stays intact: a psychotic serial killer inspired by Poe, copy-catting Poe-conceived crimes. If you don't believe it, objectively check out the book description of this Poe-inspired novel at Amazon.com:
    EDGAR ALLAN POE'S SAN FRANCISCO: TERROR TALES OF THE CITY Enough said!
    http://www.amazon.com/Edgar-Allan-Poes-San-Francisco/dp/0943283124/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335771448&sr=1-15    … Expand
  4. Knicksfan7
    Apr 29, 2012
    3
    Well i certainly thought this film had its potential but it just seemed to fall flat. Its one of those films you can go and watch without a brain and enjoy it, but if you start to think, then you realize all of its faults. I have never been a big John Cusack fan, and he certainly didn't better my views of him after i saw this film. He certainly did not give the great Edgar Allen Poe a good service either. His ad everyone else in the supporting casts acting was just lackluster, and the character development was mediocre at best. Their was no explanations or development of the victims, it was all just rushed throughout, and the actual killings besides one in particular weren't shown in great detail at all. This film was rushed, weak, and left me with an empty stomach that it just failed to fill. The costumes and the setting of the film were the only positives i could think of. There wasn't any suspenseful or bone-chilling moments to this film like the trailer promised it would have. This movie just failed to fulfill, and it certainly did a great disservice to the late great Edgar Allen Poe. Don't bother with this one. Wait for redbox or until its on television. 3/10… Expand
  5. FDT44
    Apr 27, 2012
    2
    Let me make this quick, out of respect for the late Poe, "The Raven" is a camp, leanly scripted, horribly acted calumny that unqualifyingly slaps its literary predecessor in the face and defecates on the very writing style that made him unique, supplanting the same pervasive and consuming eeriness with a cheesily rote, slice-and-dice murder mystery that tries to look mean with dark-hued tints and wailing screams but instead appears pathetically misguided and unintentionally funny. Director, James McTeigue just doesn't have a skill for wit here, ruining what could have been a fair pastiche and tribute to Poe, and instead channeling attempts to do so through a hard-to-see, black screen with Conan Doyle in the foreground becoming lost in his own self-searching investigation. 'Raven' is an uninvolving potpourri that creates such such a mess for itself, that it doesn't even know what it's trying to do. Just silly. Do yourself a favor: save some time and just read Poe instead; it's sure to be more engaging. This, however, is nothing to rave about.… Collapse

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
44 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 30 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 30
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 30
  3. Negative: 6 out of 30
  1. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    May 2, 2012
    30
    It is, in a word or two, everything that Poe's tales and poems were not: interminable and picayune.
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  2. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    May 2, 2012
    50
    The film, devising events that led up to his mysterious death in 1849, is also the most gruesomely literal-minded of period detective stories.
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  3. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Nick Pinkerton
    Apr 30, 2012
    30
    It's a pathetic missed opportunity - and one occasion of actually going broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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