John Cusack stars as Edgar Allan Poe in The Raven, a gruesome take on some of Poe’s darkest stories, here reimagined as part of a serial killer’s repertoire. Director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) certainly makes 1840s Baltimore look like the most sinister torture town in the world, but something about John Cusack’s Goatee of Historical Seriousness diminishes the horror of it all. Still, the requisite clomp-clomping of spooky horse hooves, the billowing of ominous old-timey capes, the tentative holding of flickering lanterns — this is how we build a period thriller, kids.
