Wednesday Addams may see her title of “Netflix’s resident goth detective” challenged by the release of The Pale Blue Eye. Scott Cooper’s period thriller places a young Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) at the centre of a fictionalised murder mystery in upstate New York. But, to Cooper’s credit, the film feels a lot less silly in practice than the one-sentence elevator pitch of Louis Bayard’s source novel. It’s a handsome adaptation, albeit with an unnecessary bit of literary celebrity dragged alongside it.
It’s 1830, and veteran detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) has been summoned to Westpoint Military Academy, where Poe happens to be stationed (the only detail true to biography). The dead body of a cadet, found hanged under suspicious circumstances, has been desecrated post-mortem – his heart carved from his chest and spirited away. We’re to be reminded, of course, of the “tell-tale heart” that drove the murderous and guilt-ridden protagonist of Poe’s famous short story to his eventual confession. Yet no such hauntings occur. The Pale Blue Eye – even the title is borrowed from that same story – is peppered with these sorts of substanceless references to the author’s work.
