Customer Reviews

The Raven

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Being an Edgar Allen Poe fan I rented this trash because the title is Edgar Allen Poe's, The Raven. The movie starts with a girl, named Lenoore, killing her rapist by throwing a blow dryer in the tub with him. The rest of the movie is everyone who seems to be associated with the girl including her dentist being stalked and killed by this guy who has evidently resurrected for some unexplained reason. Sound like Edgar Allen Poe to you? Let's move on from the plot to everything else. Terrible acting, lighting, and sound. No entertainment value whatsoever. Not even so bad it's good or funny. Just bad. I rented it but wanted to burn it just in case some other poor sucker made the same mistake.

How fitting for a woman named Lenore to have vivid, recurring dreams of Edgar Allan Poe reciting lines from a certain famous poem about a certain black bird. But what's all this hooey of forewarning Lenore of an evil bald man she'll have to kill in the future? She has no time for all that, what with being the lead singer of an all girl band whose music can be best described as "gothic pop". Of course, the serial killer slicing and dicing his way around town may make our wanna-be rock star change her tune. Yes. The killer (aptly named Skinner) is bald. The movie itself, not surprisingly, is bird crap. It's visually impressive, but way too surreal and dreamlike for my taste. The constant imagery is not unlike, say, a flashback scene on a CSI episode. Only instead of 2 or 3 minutes with this type of presentation, it's 80 minutes. Ulli Lommel, what happened to you? You're a far cry from films like The Boogeyman (1980), heck, even The Devonsville Terror. As always, with the exception of the '35 and '63 "adaptations", read the poem instead. 3.5/10

Thinking that this might be a modern retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's classic tale "The Raven", and seeing two very positive reviews, I almost bought this DVD (For 1.99 used at Hollywood Video - not 23.99 new at Amazon).

Fortunately, I decided to also check the title on the Internet Movie Database where it had "User Rating: 1.4/10 (252 votes)." When Amazon shows "More Buying Choices 72 used & new from $0.63" under the "Add to Shopping Cart" button, I knew this DVD must be a real turkey.

Also, the product description has "DVD Release Date: February 6, 2007" but the two positive reviews were written on April 8, 2006 and January 3, 2007 so these reviews could not have been for this DVD.

If you are a Poe enthusiast, do not watch this movie. Your family will find your bloodied remains in front of the television where you had blinded and then beaten yourself to death with the DVD case.

It's cheapie-cheap digital with bad lighting and sound. The pacing is slow... so painfully, pointlessly slow with no tension or payoff. I think the editing and effects were done by a high school AV club (with the high school's vintage editing equipment).

It tries to be nightmarish, phantasmagorical, meaningful, artsy. Instead it is just annoying and tacky, but after watching 3/4 of it you sort of lose the will to try to make any sense of it and it becomes really unintentionally funny. It takes itself so deadly seriously and just keeps going on and on and on...

Oh, and Worst Casting Ever? The raven is played by an African white necked Raven. Did you think nobody would notice the large patch of white feathers on his back? Maybe you should skip the live bird if you can't find a black one. Or use some non-toxic black dye?

Ulli Lommel's The Raven is about a girl who has psychic link to a serial killer. She longs for the days when her grandfather (Ulli Lommel) used to read her ghost stories and her favorite was The Raven. She looks at Ravens as an omen of pending doom and one of awe. But this gory and tragic tale as all too much like an Edgar Allen Poe
story; dark, gloomy and tragic. A low budget DTV film that's quite interesting, it's for Ulli Lommel fans and those who like to see something different.