The Raven

Directed by James McTeigue. Starring John Cusack, Brendan Gleeson, Alice Eve, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Luke Evans, Kevin McNally, Pam Ferris, Sergej Trifunoviæ 16 cert, general release, 110 min

IN RECENT YEARS, as cable television has continued its tyranny of quality, we’ve seen far too few cop shows hung around stupid high concepts. A fat man (who lives on a boat) solves crimes with his parrot. An alcoholic ventriloquist (who lives on a boat) solves crimes with a juggler. You remember the sorts of things.

Thank goodness for the movies. James McTeigue – director of the baffling cult phenomenon V For Vendetta– offers us a thriller about a horror writer who solves murders inspired by his own stories. And it's not just any writer. It's the popular, boozed-up libertine Edgar Allan Poe.

Yes, the scenario is more than a little familiar. We had murders based on the seven sins in Se7en. We had murders based on Shakespeare plays in the great British horror Theatre of Blood. But this set-up is bound to generate some larks and jolts. Isn't it? If only. You will look hard to find a project that fails so miserably to live up to its premise. John Cusack is woefully miscast in the central role. A tall, healthy fellow, with a very modern delivery, the likable Irish-American could not seem less like Mr Poe if he were wearing a dress and riding a motor bike. He is not helped by dialogue that seems unsure whether to embrace modern vernacular or ape Victorian rhythms and structures. At times one feels oneself stranded in a missing episode of Blackadder.

More seriously still, the writers have made no effort to house their concept in a convincing – or even lucid – plot. Rather than accumulating clues that click together to form a discernable puzzle, Poe and his detective colleagues are bombarded with a random series of equally uninteresting non-sequiturs. Then, as the credits loom over the archetypically fog-bound gable roofs, a bland, supernaturally perfunctory solution falls conveniently into their surprised laps.

We really should end with some contrived reference to a Poe story. No burial would be premature enough. Will that do?