During the autopsy of Leroy Fry (Steven Maier), a young cadet at West Point Military Academy, it becomes alarmingly aware that his hanging was more likely an act of murder than one of suicide further complicated by the postmortem removal of the young man’s heart.  Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) is brought in to investigate the case, and at the insistence of an over-eager cadet, one Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling), the two begin to unpack the twisted mystery as more and more bodies are discovered in the wake of Fry’s murder. 

Writer/Director Scott Cooper brings his adaptation of Louis Bayard’s novel, The Pale Blue Eye to Netflix and adds a gothic mystery to his varied resume of directorial efforts.  Genre-wise, this latest work is a natural amalgamation of his past films which all flirted with ideas about crime, horror, and unlocking the mythology of the American past. With Cooper, presiding over Masanobu Takayanagi’s camera, Dylan Tichenor’s editing, Howard Shore‘s score, and Stefania Cella’s production design, he is able to bring all of these interests and elements together into a haunting 128-minute tale.  Without the backing knowledge of the novel, it is hard to say how faithful of an adaptation the film counterpart is, but while it sets the stage for a twisted and dark mystery, its structure with a late exposition dump really undermines the effectiveness of the story and the reveal of the whodunit feels more like a cheap trick than a smart twist. 

Bale leads the film as a distant, yet bizarrely eccentric detective with a knack for cracking the hardest cases.  He looks good in the part but is saddled by the baggage of a deceased wife and an estranged daughter who ran away some years prior without a trace, and as the lead, he makes it incredibly hard for audiences to enter into the film because of this thorniness.  With a long history of transformative roles in the past, Bale does seem less inspired in this film than in others – though it is much more serviceable than his other 2022 outing in Amsterdam – but if this is the caliber of performances the actor is going to continue to bring to screen, it begs to question if that charisma is more appropriately attributed to the makeup and effects crews than to his actual acting ability.  It is a little hasty to strip Bale of his accolades just for his two lackluster efforts in ‘22 as neither had a great script for him to lead, and it should be noted that he is able to competently introduce audiences to this macabre world of the film. The film is also not without a few moments where lightning seems to have struck across the board creating some interesting scenes and sequences, it is just a shame that the script, as a whole work, relies too heavily on misdirection and keeping audiences totally in the dark of what is happening, effectively pulling a bait and switch scheme on audiences as Cooper’s script does not allow the audience to play along.  It not only cheats the film out of suspense – recall Alfred Hitchcock’s famous allegory about the bomb under the table – but it forces Bale to work within a tight box for much of the film so as not to hint at the reveal which is delivered all at once at the very end of the film, but in such a way that there is no gumption or force behind it and it dully lands. 

Opposite of Bale is Melling, the not-yet-published Poe who, true to history, was enrolled at the military academy at the time of the events of the film.  Melling plays Poe with his own set of eccentricities that complement and contrast Bale’s August, and the chemistry between the two men is jovial and amusing to watch against the backdrop of the gruesome murders.  The actor broke out as Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films, and since his graduation from there has largely spent his time playing supporting roles in a host of interesting works and exciting projects, but with Cooper, he can stretch his skills into a leading performance and proves quite capable of handling a feature film even when he has to split custody with such a widely known name as Bale.  His role has a little more to do in the film than Bale’s, specifically because as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that Poe is a little more interested in solving this case than August, and as an audience, we finally begin getting some answers through Poe’s involvement and insistence with the case. 

Poe, emboldened by his search for answers and captivated by her beauty, begins to fall for Lea (Lucy Boynton), the daughter of Dr. Marquis (Toby Jones) who performed the initial and somewhat shoddy autopsy on Fry.  Thankfully, The Pale Blue Eye does not follow a typical romantic subplot, or even worse a love triangle between the two detectives, but somehow Lea is given an even more thankless role in the film than if she were a more straightforward damsel.  She is plagued by random seizures, a device used to add intrigue and pad the runtime, but it holds ultimately no consequence.  By the time she is entrenched into the story, Poe and August are already hot on the trail of witchcraft as multiple animals and another cadet have been found slain and with their hearts removed.  That trail ultimately leads the two to the Marquis family who has employed ritualistic medicine in an effort to cure Lea, but it takes such a long time to get there and Cooper holds the clues to the crime way too close to his heart to keep audiences engaged in the story that interest in the narrative fades around the halfway point. 

Thankfully, the craft departments really go above and beyond in this film, and had they not been working at such an exceptional level it truly would be an impenetrable slog.  The biggest flaw with the film, though, is the left-field ending that is poured out in an extended exposition sequence and motivated by a disgusting and tired sexual assault trope.  Saving everything to the last fifteen minutes is such a disservice to the narrative as it gives the cast little to work with in the middle act, and because every clue was a red herring, it is understandable that audiences are frustrated at the conclusion.  It is a squandered attempt that has all of the elements to be a great suspenseful thriller – the kind of stories that become rewatchable favorites because of the layers – but as presented, it crumbles under the weight of trying to do everything in those final moments instead of spacing out the breadcrumbs across the runtime.