The idea of an animated anthology of macabre Edgar Allan Poe tales, presented in different visual aesthetics, seems great on paper. But the promising concept suffers somewhat in the execution. Despite the diverse "looks" of the animated segments, the animation is all of a similarly limited CGI variety. The film's biggest weakness is the framing device, which involves the spirit of Poe in the body of a raven having an introspective conversation with the spirit of Death in a cemetery full of statuary. The animation in the cemetery scenes is particularly lackluster (almost like flattened objects in a three-dimensional space), the voice work is uninspired, and the whole thing is set in the bright daylight, which is a curious choice for an anthology of such dark tales. Luckily, the Poe stories themselves are appropriately atmospheric, once they get going.
The movie tells five classic Edgar Allan Poe tales. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is narrated brilliantly by British horror icon Christopher Lee. The animation is fluid and designed with a stylized, quasi-geometric, "carved-out-of-wood" quality. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is accompanied by a seemingly ancient audio recording of the great Bela Lugosi ("Dracula"), and presented in a stark black and white style inspired by the work of comic artist Alberto Breccia. Incorporating long-dead horror icon Lugosi is a cool touch, but the muffled audio seems too quiet and detached from the animation. "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (with the voice of Julian Sands) has a comic book aesthetic. "The Pit and the Pendulum", set during the Spanish Inquisition, is narrated by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, and the animation approximates a photo-realistic video game. The medieval tale, "The Masque of the Red Death", is told solely through its imagery (no narration), and has a watercolor aesthetic. The stories are dark and eerie, and occasionally gruesome. Some use Poe's original words, some paraphrase within Poe's narrative, and one uses no words at all.
Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are well-served in the anthology format, and stylized animation captures Poe's eerie atmosphere better than live-action ever could. This movie seems like a match made in heaven, but the animation is not entirely satisfying and the cemetery framework is a drag. Still, you can't go wrong with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and "Extraordinary Tales" (2013) would be a nice introduction to Poe's classic stories for modern audiences.
