Over the course of his long writing career, Edgar Allan Poe wrote some pretty grisly stories. There was "The Pit and the Pendulum," in which a man is strapped to a table under a slowly-lowering swinging blade; "The Tell Tale Heart," which was about a murderer tortured by the sound of a beating organ; "The Murders In The Rue Morgue," in which is the tale of an orangutan who brutally killed two women; and many, many others. So what would happen if a murderer decided to start those ideas and bringing them to life? That's exactly the story behind James McTeigue's The Raven.

The first trailer for the film has arrived online. You can check it out below or in HD over on Apple.



Overall it's not a bad preview. The scream at the beginning is an interesting and immediate way to set the mood and at the very least it looks stylistically interesting (but that can always be expected from McTeigue's work). It does seem to be taking a few cues from Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, but that movie was loved by both audiences and critics alike, so it's hard to blame it for that.

The Raven is scheduled to hit theaters on March 9, 2012. For more, including posters, news, and images, be sure to head over to our Blend Film Database.