So Bad: A review of The Raven.

by shuntheepic

John Cusack’s leading role in the Edgar Allen Poe action thriller, The Raven, is the most obviously overmatched casting call ever seen in a major Hollywood film. While one cannot entirely place the fault of this film on Cusack’s shoulders, he is partially responsible. This is a rare disaster that started with the producer, trickled down to the writer, and enlisted the director all actively entombing themselves on a sinking ship, together.

Edgar Allen Poe is possible America’s most mentally unattractive writing icon: a list which includes more hateful alcoholics than productive citizens, yielding a man so twisted by death, scowling with a, huge, balding head, yet willingly revived as a charming anti-detective, solving mysteries a step ahead of the police.

I though John Cusack was kind-of-the-man before I saw this movie. He starred in High Fidelity, held that boom box up in that movie, I rooted for him in America’s Sweethearts. He seemed like a pretty rad, possibly depressed, aging every-man.

After watching Cusack play this charming detective with (I swear to god) a pet raccoon and solve murder-mysteries based on his stories, that credibility dissolved with unseen immediacy.

In one scene, Edgar Allen Poe puts a cowl on, because he’s walking undetected amongst the wealthy via a costume ball plot device, never seen that before, and right after he puts on the mask, prepared to mingle he says, “Nevermore”. Like the raven. In his poem. So that’s how he got the idea.

Then the movie makes you go through the grim catalog of murders. A victim: how did I get here? The killer: masked, and aurrounded in darkness (not enough darkness). The torture device – a swinging pendulum with convoluted machinery of gears and bolts inevitably ticking towards striking distance, unfettered by the pleas and screams of the fat maybe-banker(?) bound to his grizzly deathbed. A surprising amount of murder footage. And then a scene with the same detective in the same police station asking Is this also one of your stories, Poe. And then Cusack Yes, The Pit and the Pendulum! I wonder if I would have liked this movie in 8^th grade. That was an era where I really liked to show off the fact that I knew a lot of names of books.

The police need an expert on the writings influencing these theatrical crimes, so who better than Cusack’s Poe to be wrestled away from his nights of tortuous sleep and days as a plucky wordsmith to help catch the killer.

There is also a Judge Reinhold character, a sidekick with a burgeoning relationship both in his experience with a job he’s just starting to understand; and as a partner to an Eddie Murphian rule-breaker but gold hearted superstar (Cusack… I think).

Cusack very nearly resembles how Nicholas Cage must act in real life. An intriguing, kind of sleazy man, who knows he’s famous, and has a nice smile, so girls are always going to throw him some. That is the decision this film decided to make on its key character – who by the way – is also Edgar Allen Poe.

The amount of horrible dialogue you have to watch leading up to Poe and the Reinhold character figuring one  murder has to do with Cask of Amontillado is breath-taking. Did you ever write about a sailor? No, not a sailor. Well he’s on a boat. A boat you say… what’s the boats name? Fortunato, why? Eureka! That’s the first line in a quite well-known short story entitled shootmenow.

The murderer is his type-setter, I guess. I mean he claims to be. He may have been a relevant character at some junction of the film, but by the time this is revealed he could just have of been a count, or a girlfriend’s ex, or a rival writer. A type-setter helps make books, if you’re wondering. As the murderer is victoriously taunting over his perfect crime, he asks Poe if he’s ever been to France. Poe, drowsy from some poisonous concoction, mumbles something. The type-setter mentions a young writer named Jules Verne, reminds me a lot of you, he says. Who are they pandering to by name-dropping the Intro to Lit reading list? Me in eight grade and absolutely no one else. Which makes me think that think that this movie was directed to impress me in 8th grade and a wistful band of would be coffee-drinking English majors (pre-hipsters? Does this generation have  pre-hipsters?), because only would that precise human archetype fantasize about the Jules Verne-based-murders inevitably amounting to a series of culturally validated Saw movies.