A fictionalized account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe's life, in which the poet is in pursuit of a serial killer whose murders mirror those in the writer's stories.
Director James McTeigue has no feel for humor or terror, making what could have been a witty pastiche into another cheesy slice-and-dice horror flick.
– Colin Covert,
Minneapolis Star Tribune,
27 Apr 2012
rotten:
The subject matter screams out for cleverness and depth, the sort of mind-bending twists and satisfying darkness that Poe himself would love. It finds them only in small doses.
– John Wenzel,
Denver Post,
27 Apr 2012
rotten:
Never commits to the kind of full-bore lunacy that might have made the film a campy pleasure.
– Eric D. Snider,
Film.com,
27 Apr 2012
rotten:
It lingers intolerably on some inessential scenes, rushes through others, and fails to provide any motivation either for Poe's devoted (albeit fictional) love, or the film's archvillain.
– Stephen Whitty,
Newark Star-Ledger,
28 Apr 2012
fresh:
Basically a well-researched but formulaic mystery centered on one of those nyah-nyah serial killers we've seen a thousand times.