The Pale Blue Eye

Scott Cooper began adapting Louis Bayard’s novel in 2011 for Fox 2000; it came together only a decade later, once Netflix took the rights at the European Film Market for around 55 million dollars. It is Cooper and Christian Bale’s third film together, after Out of the Furnace and Hostiles. Poe’s place in it is not invented: he matriculated as a cadet at West Point on 1 July 1830 and got out by having himself court-martialled in February 1831 for neglecting duty. Invented are the murders laid across those months, and Landor. Shooting opened at the historic Compass Inn in Laughlintown, Pennsylvania, then moved in December to Westminster College in New Wilmington. Two tavern extras are John Fetterman and his wife Gisele Barreto Fetterman, met by Bale and Cooper in Braddock in 2013; Bale says the face belongs in the 1830s. Robert Duvall’s last screen role is here; he died in February 2026. For a period mystery it drew a supporting visual effects nomination at the 21st Visual Effects Society Awards. A good fit if you want the ground between investigator and investigated to swap at the close more than the murders solved. Not for viewers who cannot take the solution resting on an account of sexual assault, spelled out at the end.