That's Edgar Allan Poe himself, staggering around a tavern and challenging patrons to finish a simple line of doggerel they really ought to recognize: "'Quoth the Raven…' Anyone?" The only person croaking out a "Nevermore" is a Frenchman, wouldn't you know it. Such are the humiliations for poor Poe (played by John Cusack) inThe Raven, an attempt to recast the tortured author as an investigator in a fiendish series of murders drawn from his own writings. He's enlisted by a Baltimore detective (Luke Evans,Immortals) to assist in the sleuthing, even though Poe would rather be drinking or wooing a fair maiden (Alice Eve), or probably both. (He doesn't seem to have a lot of time for writing.) ThisSherlock Holmes-ian concoction might have worked if director James McTeigue had found a way to maintain interest in the actual storyline, but the movie's weirdly dull--even with a damsel in distress for the second half of the action, the characters are colorless and the direction mechanical. Cusack gives it his all, wrapping a sneer around a handful of one-liners that George Sanders might've enjoyed, but the gore and the quips sit uneasily together, in a desperate hunt for a proper tone. And while this kind of vehicle isn't expected to provide documentary reality, it must be said that the movie never convinces us this person is remotely close to the actual writer called Edgar A. Poe.The Ravencouldn't handle that level of perversity.--Robert Horton