Soundtrack Review: The Raven (2012)

The Raven Soundtrack Review: This is a review of the film score The Raven by Lucas Vidal.

“Lucas Vidal does a great effort of capturing the essence of the story, the essence of Edgar Allan Poe, but the darkness of the story doesn’t come across too well.”

The Raven is a story where someone starts to commit horrible murders inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s works. Poe joins forces with a young Baltimore detective to stop the killings. An interesting concept no doubt, and Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most interesting authors out there. Directed by James McTeigue and starring John Cusack, Alice Eve and Luke Evans, this film seems very interesting. The score is composed by Lucas Vidal.

Track List

1. The Raven	80
2. Fields Arrives	60
3. The Pit and the Pendulum	60
4. Rush to the Theatre	80
5. Maddox Identifies the Body	60
6. Poe and Emily	60
7. Ladies Luncheon	60
8. Man in Red Hat	80
9. The Mystery of Marie Roget	60
10. The Entombment of Fortunato	80
11. Poe Talks of His Wife’s Death	60
12. Searching the Theatre	80
13. Police Breifing	60
14. Poe and Hamilton on the Path	80
15. Edgar Chases the Killer	80
16. Going to the Editor	60
17. Where’s Emily	60
18. Finding Emily	60
19. Searching the Church Yard	60
20. Poe on Bench	80
21. In the Hospital	80
22. Rakish Paddy	60

The Raven is Lucas Vidal’s second 2012 thriller score after The Cold Light Of Day that I recently reviewed. The trailers look interesting and it should definitely be a good chance of a decent score. As it turns out, the score is decent, painfully so. With all these strong characters like Edgar Allan Poe you would expect a killer theme or three, but it all kind of blend together and it’s a bit disappointing. Instead you get tracks that is tense, but doesn’t quite excite me.

The opening cue ‘The Raven’ has great potential if it was longer, perhaps part of a suite. I want it to grow into a monstrous cue, but it doesn’t. The opening is sinister and evil, very dark. You expect it to blow up any second and it does around the 37 second mark. It turns into an action cue with heavy percussion and electronic sound design with short burst of violin capturing the essence of The Raven. Unfortunately the essence isn’t quite up to code, but it feels like I could taste it. The potential is here, but somehow it doesn’t get there.

Have Spotify? Listen to the Album here:

Conclusion

Lucas Vidal does a great effort of capturing the essence of the story, the essence of Edgar Allan Poe, but the darkness of the story doesn’t come across too well. I feel it’s there, but I am not shaken up, I am not excited nor scared. The score is growing on me though and there might be nuances here I haven’t heard or fallen in love with yet, but as it stands, The Raven is an adequate score for what it is.

GEEK SCORE: 68.1

Listen to The Raven soundtrack by Lucas Vidal below:

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