Once upon a midnight dreary

I love seeing films that I've never heard of before and thus have absolutley zero preconceptions about. It's super fun making judgements right from the title and as the opening credits run. And so my initial thoughts about this film were; 'Awesome! I love ravens. Ravens are great....'

This might actually be a rook, but the sentiment still stands.

The Raven (2012) 

Firstly, there's not enough ravens in this film. But there is John Cusack with an amusing beard as a down and out Edgar Allan Poe running around Victorian era Baltimore trying to trace a crazed obsessive serial killer who is reenacting Poe's fictional murders. It's all very dark and complex with a vaguely (and literally) tortured romance going on as well.

You're plunged into the scary dark world right from the onset. And having read none of Poe's fiction, I was totally unprepared for the grisly violence! I was feeling fairly creeped throughout the entire film as the body count notches up. Stylistically, it was like a time warped Se7en with touches of the game 'Hard Rain' for good measure the way you're led to consider 'whodunnit?'

John Cusack, as ever, is excellent and compelling. I don't really remember the rest of the cast, which goes to show... The script is surprisingly witty with some great exchanges between Poe and everyone he speaks to really. His is a very lovingly developed character.

The ending I thought was a very clever take on the actual facts surrounding Poe near the time of his death. 

Quoth the raven; it's a tongue!  

~Aim

Also when we saw this scene we both burst out. Is that a tongue?

~ Chris