By GRACE DETWILER
Starring William Moseley, Melanie Zanetti, Kate Dickie
Written by Christopher Hatton and Chuck Reeves
Directed by Christopher Hatton
Fictionalized biopics that incorporate supernatural forces always risk ending up as a glorified episode of Doctor Who. Unfortunately, that appears to be what happened to Christopher Hatton’s Edgar Allan Poe film for Shudder, RAVEN’S HOLLOW. Focusing on Poe’s stint at West Point military academy, before he pioneered American Romanticism and Gothic literature, RAVEN’S HOLLOW reduces Poe’s influences to their barest form and ignores the most fascinating elements of his life up until that point. Hatton fashions Poe into a suave if naive gentleman, rather than his far-more-interesting real-life counterpart: an orphan of actor parents who grew up surrounded by sickness and death and entered the army to save himself from destitution.
In RAVEN’S HOLLOW, while returning to West Point with a group of other cadets, Poe and Co. encounter a grisly corpse strung to a suspiciously wing-shaped tree. The men cut down the corpse, and return it to the nearby town of Raven’s Hollow, a town helmed by a disconcerting mother-daughter pair – Charlotte (Melanie Zanetti, Love and Monsters) and Elizabeth Ingram (Katie Dickie, The VVitch). Poe himself is played by The Chronicles of Narnia’s eldest Pevensie sibling, William Moseley. If King Peter the Magnificent seems like an odd choice for Edgar Allan Poe, you would be right – it is.
The group of soldiers-to-be goes on to find that the townspeople are terrified of “The Raven,” a demon-like figure pictured as a cloaked, winged figure with a raven skull mask. However, Poe is convinced the corpse was the result of a good old-fashioned murder. Through a series of gory reveals, it comes to light that some association exists between The Raven and the Ingram family. The Raven is one of many surface-level references to Poe’s work. Others include a beating tell-tale heart and a brief cameo by Lenore, another character from Poe’s poetry.
RAVEN’S HOLLOW invokes familiar elements of folk, supernatural, and Gothic horror to create the eerily atmospheric mood of the film. Despite being one of the film’s highlights, this mood is disappointingly one-note, in part due to the script’s weakness, compounded by a few odd casting choices. On the upside, Zanetti and Dickie’s performances as the Ingram daughter and mother, respectively, provide the most watchable scenes in RAVEN’S HOLLOW; if only Kate Dickie could have been given more to do with her considerable talent.
At the end of the day, RAVEN’S HOLLOW is only about fifty percent successful. Complemented by beautiful cinematography and stunning creature design, the highest point of RAVEN’S HOLLOW is undoubtedly the score. To read Rue Morgue’s interview with composer Robert Ellis-Geiger, click here. Yet, these qualities are unfortunately overshadowed by issues with the concept, pacing, and the script itself. Oddly enough given Poe’s American heritage, the film is an almost entirely British production, which only exacerbates the inconsistencies between the Poe we know and love, and the Poe of RAVEN’S HOLLOW.
RAVEN’S HOLLOW is available now to stream on Shudder.
