If you want to see a movie that weaves a mystery worthy of the stories we’ve come to know and love from Edgar Allan Poe, then The Pale Blue Eye might be for you. However, it is also not a movie that delves completely into Poe’s ideas, but it isn’t just a movie that simply includes him as a character, either. Let me explain.

The Pale Blue Eye follows Detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) as he investigates a murder. As the case unfolds, he enlists the help of Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling)—before he becomes the Edgar Allan Poe we know as the author of horror stories that haunted readers. The movie itself is a slow burn, and in that way it does feel like it is building a Poe story, similar to how his actual work presented itself to us as we were reading it. But the movie also serves as a fictional way of learning about Poe prior to his work as an author.