THE PALE BLUE EYE Review by Eric Lindbom
As Edgar Allan Poe is patron saint of ScareTube.com (see him eyeballing you from above?) we couldn’t pass up the chance to weigh in on the period whodunnit THE PALE BLUE EYE (Netflix).
No, the macabre bard of Baltimore never helped solve a series of grisly murders at West Point military academy. Novelist Louis Bayard dreamed up this eerie tale set in the 1830s but Poe indeed served as a military cadet there before his poems and short stories took wing.
Constable Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) is hired to solve the mystery of a newly deceased cadet. The departed hung himself causing a grim riddle – somehow his heart, cut from his corpse, is missing. Landor has a reputation both as a revered crime solver and a hard drinker, the latter trait worrisome to the stiff upper lip academy brass desperate to avoid a scandal.
Early in his digging he’s approached by a socially awkward, verbose cadet who insists the defiler has a poetic bent since he stole the organ we associate with human emotion. Landor senses a comrade and an insider and enlists young Poe (played with wide-eyed zeal by Henry Melling) to assist him. While an amateur sleuth, Poe proves more of a Sherlock Holmes than a mere Dr. Watson as the killings escalate.
THE PALE BLUE EYE is the third filmic collaboration between its writer/producer/director Scott Cooper and Bale. Rightly feted for previously explosive characters, Bale does riveting, interior work since Landor plays his cards close to the vest. While disrespectful of authority he’s also riven with sadness over a missing daughter but is unable to express his grief.
Conversely, Melling’s Poe is hardly the morbid, dipsomaniacal figure we expect. Witty and wet behind the ears, he speaks floridly (verbal purple prose) especially while pursuing the daughter of the academy physician (Toby Jones). Since adult Poe, along with his other titanic achievements, wrote what’s widely acknowledged as the first detective stories (MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE and THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET) the unmentioned conceit here is this fictional adventure showed him the ropes.
While THE PALE BLUE EYE has elements of Satanism, it will entice detective genre fans. The impressive cast rivals any BBC production (A glamour free Charlotte Gainsbourg as Landor’s bar maid lover and confidant, usually restrained Gillian Anderson and Timothy Spall playing for the rafters and 92-year-old Robert Duvall in a welcome cameo as an occult expert).
Still, it transcends stuffy, comfy costume drama trappings by realistic, gritty sets from production designer Stefania Cella. Viewers may grab a scarf at home as the wintry scenes positively chill. At times, we see the actors’ breaths.
Despite the nippy setting, this intelligent (literal and figurative) chiller has a slow burn, methodical pace culminating in a stunning finale twist. If you can guess it, start your own side hustle as a private eye.
Eric Lindbom is a hardcore horror buff with a strong stomach, weaned on the Universal classics from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s written film and/or music reviews for City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, LA WEEKLY, Request magazine and Netflix. He co-edits triggerwarningshortfiction.com, a site specializing in horror, fantasy and crime short stories with illustrations by co-editor John Skewes. He lives in Los Angeles.
