Entry 1: RE: "Raven" - What did I just see?

Posted by: Chad Van Alstin

While I liked the gory scenes, I agree that they seem made for 3D. Very strange. It's almost as if this was intended, as so many films are presently, to be a 3D blockbuster. After all, it seems to have all the makings of a really fun adventure flick -- great cast, murder, a damsel in distress, gunplay. 

Yet, the end result is really flat. Nothing ends up being really fun at all -- though the potential for fun was there.  I wouldn't necessarily mind the hokey, generic, script if it were all packaged in a fun movie. The only real enjoyment I found came from mocking the movie moments that we've all seen previously in countless other films. 

I guess that the only question I have is this: was this film intended to be more, or is this just some boring movie that the filmmakers added Edgar Allan Poe into as a gimmick to sell tickets? I'm inclined to believe it's the latter.

Chad's Take: "The Raven" (2012) - 1 Star

I’m going to assume by now that you’ve seen the trailer for The Raven, a film by V For Vendetta director, James McTeigue. You know the premise: a fictional Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) is helping hunt down a serial murderer, who seems deeply inspired by Poe’s work. This story is told through a series of chase scenes, shootouts, and other movie clichés.

To say that the plot unfolds without originality would be a complete understatement. This is a formula movie, and a very poor one at that. The Raven displays a visual style that seems to strive for mediocrity, and only succeeds at reaching that level some of the time. The film shows very little creativity in its visual style, and sometimes it looks downright ugly.

The cinematography is as formulaic as the film’s script — every shot seems borrowed from somewhere else; every scene seems crafted around a stale idea from the past. While I expected to see a film heavily influenced by past “whodunits”, The Raven fails so completely to deliver anything original that it seems like little more than a cheap knockoff.