This disturbing probe into the group psychology of terror is couched within the framework of an excellently mounted thriller. Based on a celebrated true story from before World War II, the plot deals with the effects on a small town of an outbreak of poison pen letters. As Henri-Georges Clouzot establishes viable guilt in character after character, and tensions among the recipients of the letters begin to result in suicides, the mood of all-embracing suspicion is marvelously developed in visual terms. “Le corbeau is a hellbrew that has lost not a fraction of its flavor, and it feels all too pertinent to the age of trolls” (Anthony Lane, New Yorker).