Edgar Allen Poe‘s stories and macabre poetry have long been a source for films and television. None so more than director Christopher Hatton’s Raven’s Hollow. This title takes one of many people’s favorite Poe sonnets, The Raven, and has turned it into quite a taut and entertaining thriller movie. Not messing around with psychological head-scratcher narratives, Raven’s Hollow is a twisted tale that mashes up a few of Poe’s original source material ideas and weaves them into a really cool story. This is combined with writers (Christopher Hatton and Chuck Reeves) taking inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe’s baffling departure in 1830 from a Military Academy he was part of.
In Raven’s Hollow Edgar Allen Poe is a cadet from West Point. He and a group of men are exploring the surrounding countryside on a training exercise. They notice what looks like a scarecrow in a field further along and head over to take a look. Instead of a scarecrow, they find a man, half dead, and opened up down the middle, splayed like a bird. Not to mention he is also tied to a framing device with his hands and feet. On closer inspection, they realize the man is still alive and as they draw near he utters the word “raven” before dying.
Nameless here for Evermore
Of course, then the men decide they should investigate and are now on the hunt for a murderer in the area. They end up in a local community that shields their secrets as we know they must. In Raven’s Hollow, the raven is represented by a closely guarded urban legend within the small town. The caretaker Usher (Oberon K.A. Adjepong) tries to warn the cadets early on that their fates are sealed having come into the town at all. However, these men aspire to prove their worth and decide not to leave until they have figured out what is going on. The introduction of the familiar character of Lenore takes the form of a mother and daughter’s sister.
Like any good Poe adaptation, there are plenty of twists, turns, and the odd slurp of Opium just to make things interesting. Everything combined gives pause to further blur the audience’s view of whether what is happening is real or a dream. Performances from everyone on screen were excruciatingly vivid with standout scenes from Kate Dickie’s Elizabeth Ingram.
Raven’s Hollow is rated
4 Nevermore, Nevermore out of 5
The Raven’s Hollow Trailer is on the Mother of Movies YouTube Channel
Is there a movie of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe?
Aside from this title, Raven’s Hollow was released in 2022, there is a previous production that was made in 1963. A Gothic horror comedy The Raven follows a similar ethos to Raven’s Hollow in that some of the characters have similarities including the name of Lenore. Even further back, in 1935 Lew Landers The Raven was a horror film about a mad surgeon. In 2012 a title called The Raven centers its plot on the life of Edgar Allen Poe rather than examining his poetry.
- Director
- Christopher Hatton
- Writers
- Christopher Hatton
- Chuck Reeves (story co-writer)
The cast of Raven’s Hollow has these stars Melanie Zanetti, William Moseley, David Hayman, Callum Woodhouse, Oberon K.A. Adjepong, and Kate Dickie.
Where to Watch Raven’s Hollow
Releases to the Shudder streaming platform as a Shudder Original on 22nd September 2022. Distribution is by Shudder and production is by 828 Media Capital.
