Rating of
3/4
Wasn't that bad
Matthew Brady - wrote on 05/04/15
Wow a 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, I know I shouldn't compare people's rating to a film but I think it was that bad.
The Raven follows the tale of Edgar Allan Poe are vividly brought to life - and death - in this stylish, gothic thriller starring John Cusack as the infamous author. When a madman begins committing horrific murders inspired by Poe's darkest works, a young Baltimore detective (Luke Evans) joins forces with Poe in a quest to get inside the killer's mind in order to stop him from making every one of Poe's brutal stories a blood chilling reality. A deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, which escalates when Poe's love (Alice Eve) becomes the next target.
Before I started this review I did some research on this movie and I found out quite a lot of things about this movie and that's the stress and living hell that these film markers or who every worked on this movie faced while the budget and the production went completely wrong. This stuff always happens, I mean loads of classic and beloved movies had a lot of thing wrong with the budget or the production but it always payed off, but for this movie it didn't and while I didn't see it when it first came out because at the time was watching movies that took my interest. A week ago now I've seen the movie and to out thoughts together I can say that this movie isn't bad but wasn't that good, it's on the level of okay.
John Cusack is a great actor but at the beginning of this movie was a bit over the top with him chewing up the scene and that's only the beginning, but after a while he actually began to act and for the most of the movie he did great in the role. Nothing Oscar worthy but still a solid performance and he did his best of what he can work with, if only the movie had a better script.
The rest of cast like: Luke Evans, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Alice Eve and Brendan Gleeson all did a solid performance, just like I said about John Cusack there all did they best of what they got I mean it's not like they did a terrible performance well actually they were good in the movie, not the best performance but still good in a way that I let them have a pass.
The cinematography in this movie looks great, every shot in the movie looked like it took forever to do in some scenes. The set, the costumes and the make-up look pretty good. The final positive thing I can say is that the movie at least doesn't look cheap like some other big Hollywood movies.
Now for problems and there's a lot: The writing in the movie was pretty bland and blah, the movie also felt really short and I normally don't say that before in my reviews but I felt that the movie ended to quick and it rushed a lot of things to end it which I predict that most people wanted but for me I thought the movie may have improved in some way as it went a long but it ended just like that.
The love triangle between Edger Allan Poe and Emily I didn't really care about and this is a bad thing. What I mean is that Emily is like a plot device, the whole movie is about trying to find Emily before it's too late, but here's the thing I don't care about Emily because she wasn't that development and she wasn't all that special to me, now the problem here is that the story is about trying to find her and solve the murder case, but if your movie audience doesn't care about Emily that means they don't care about the story or everything around it and they want it to be over because these nothing there to care about.
Overall The Raven wasn't a terrible movie as people are making it out to be but it could have been a lot better then it was.
