The Pale Blue Eye

Fans of single-location murder mysteries like The Name of the Rose will be drawn to the murky goings-on in this moody period thriller. Christian Bale plays Augustus Landor, a widowed, semi-retired detective called in to solve the death of a cadet at West Point in the winter of 1830. The intriguing twist is that Landor enlists a young Edgar Allan Poe (a suitably eccentric Harry Melling), a cadet himself whose morbid musings and insider knowledge prove useful, especially when further gruesome killings suggest supernatural involvement. Writer/director Scott Cooper, reuniting with Bale after Out of the Furnace and {italHostiles, can't quite maintain the suspense levels throughout. However, Bale brings subtlety to another of his brooding, bewhiskered heroes, while a classy cast including Gillian Anderson, Toby Jones, Timothy Spall and Robert Duvall (as an aged expert on the occult) provides plenty of choice when it comes to suspects and motives.