Review | Netflix movie review: The Pale Blue Eye – Christian Bale plays detective in Edgar Allan Poe-inspired murder mystery
- Christian Bale plays a retired detective investigating a series of gruesome killings at the West Point US military academy in 1830, with Poe as his adviser
- The story is shot through with the same sense of dread and foreboding as is found in much of Poe’s writing, but is rarely truly terrifying
3/5 stars
As a young man, celebrated American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe served as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His involvement in a murder investigation during the winter of 1830, however, is purely the invention of author Louis Bayard.
His 2003 historical mystery novel The Pale Blue Eye serves as the basis for this eerie gothic thriller from writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart).
Christian Bale plays retired New York detective Augustus Landor, and Harry Melling (Harry Potter, The Old Guard) stars as Poe, who is all too eager to assist Landor in investigating a series of gruesome murders that take place at the illustrious institution.
After a young cadet is found hanged in a tree, West Point’s commanding officer, Captain Hitchcock (Simon McBurney), calls upon the services of Landor, a celebrated and recently widowed detective who lives nearby.
The seemingly innocuous case takes a turn for the macabre, however, when it is revealed that, during the night, someone has broken into the morgue and removed the dead man’s heart with surgical precision.
With the eccentric Poe serving as his guide, Landor’s investigation leads him into the darkest recesses of the revered establishment, where any number of cadets and faculty members become suspects.
The work of Poe, regarded by many as the father of American horror, has had a defining influence on tales of the macabre for more than 150 years, and The Pale Blue Eye does more than merely lift its title from The Tell-Tale Heart, one of the writer’s most famous works.
The entire story is shot through with the same sense of dread and foreboding that emanates from so much of Poe’s writing, which is only heightened further by Poe’s presence within the narrative. Bayard and Cooper playfully suggest that the events we are witnessing may have in turn inspired Poe to create some of his most iconic prose.
Bale, in his third collaboration with Cooper, lends Landor a gruff, no-nonsense demeanour, which shields a damaged and vulnerable man who has shied away from society and scrutiny for too long.
Melling presents Poe as a curious outcast struggling to find his place in society, while the rest of the ensemble – Toby Jones, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Gillian Anderson et al – do what they can with the meagre scraps afforded them.
Unfortunately, The Pale Blue Eye never comes close to being terrifying and is only occasionally unsettling, despite its rich atmospheric production values; it takes a turn towards the ridiculous right when it should have delivered its killer blow.
The Pale Blue Eye will start streaming on Netflix on January 6.
