Film Review: "The Pale Blue Eye" (2022).

"Every heart tells a tale" in The Pale Blue Eye. This mystery thriller film adapted and directed by Scott Cooper, and based on the 2003 novel of the same title by Louis Bayard. West Point, 1830. A world-weary detective is hired to discreetly investigate the gruesome murder of a cadet. Stymied by the cadets’ code of silence, he enlists one of their own to help unravel the case — a young man the world would come to know as Edgar Allan Poe.

In February 2021, a film adaptation based on Bayard's 2003 novel to be adapted and directed by Cooper with Christian Bale attached to star. The film would mark Cooper and Bale's third collaboration after Out of Furnace (2013) and Hostiles (2017). In early March, it was announced that Netflix pre-bought the rights to the film for around US$55 million at the European Film Market. By late November, Harry Melling, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Simon McBurney, Hadley Robinson, Timothy Spall, Robert Duvall, Gideon Glick, Fred Hechinger, and Charlie Tahan rounded out the film's cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced and wrapped in late February 2022. Filming took place throughout Pennsylvania, USA. According to Melling, Bale did not exhibit Method acting techniques during the making of the film.

The film stars Bale, Melling, Anderson, Boynton, Gainsbourg, Jones, McBurney, Robinson, Spall, Duvall, Glick, Hechinger, and Tahan. Bale imbues Landor with convincing traces of lingering trauma, but it's Melling who rivets our attention. Melling as Edgar Allan Poe is immensely watchable, but the story is downgraded to a bog-standard thriller.

It’s all very watchable in a low-expectations way, though anyone hoping for a tale worthy of Poe himself should look elsewhere. The film, however, is very serious, and the dissonance between its dramatic intentions, its events and its execution generates something of a mess. Audiences new to Edgar Allan Poe's work will comes away from Cooper's trite thriller with little understanding of the man himself, the times he lived him, or his hugely influential canon. The problem is that the film is all surface. The movie is nothing but its fun idea, without much development or ingenuity. Even though this film has more than its share of dark, gruesome elements, there is also enough of a sense of playfulness in it to help make it entertaining. A bizarre mishmash of historical elements and subpar on-screen drama capped off with an underwhelming but serviceable performance from Bale. The plot itself does little to provide the scares, and the entire film is completely devoid of tension and incredibly repetitive. Especially considering the strength Cooper has shown in the past, the film feels like a massive disappointment. The filmmaker’s propensity for brooding character studies means the film's seed finds a little more purchase than the typical horror outing. To be honest, things only stumble if one begins to think of what sort of film was left on the table compared to the one that was released.

Simon says The Pale Blue Eye receives:

Also, see my review for Hostiles.