Director James McTeigue talks The Raven

TF scored an early screening of the trailer for The Raven at Comic-Con earlier this year and now Edgar Allan Poe fans can see it online .

Hot on the heels of that trailer, director James McTeigue has also whipped the horses and started the press bandwagon rolling properly.

The film is described as a gritty thriller, in which Poe (John Cusack) joins forces with a young Baltimore detective (Luke Evans) to hunt down a mad serial killer who's using Poe's own works as the basis for a string of brutal murders.

Sounds gruesome and McTeigue says he won't be pulling any punches. Asked if he'll be shying away from an R rating he told Fangoria, “No, uh-uh."

"I’m not trying to compete with Saw ; Saw is very particular and we’re more in the psychological suspense-thriller mode rather than a straight-out horror film,” he said before adding, “I would say the tone is more like a film like Se7en , that’s where it falls.”

Poe was an alcoholic and a drug user and McTeigue says the film doesn’t shy away from that. So how did John Cusack get into that mindset?

“He lost weight to give himself the drawn sort of Poe look, he grew a goatee and died his hair a little blacker than it usually is, to really get into Poe’s physical space,” McTeigue reveals.

“And then, John always talked about how he was friendly with Hunter S. Thompson and he could see parallels between Hunter and Poe, and I think that helped inform the character for John.”

The Raven also stars Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson and Oliver Jackson-Cohen and opens in 2012.