The Crow (2024)
Director: Rupert Sanders
Screenwriters: Zack Baylin, William Schneider
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, Danny Huston
Contrary to popular belief, lightning can, in fact, strike the same place twice. Additionally, the odds of getting struck by lightening are low – but never zero. The same could be said of reboots, remakes, and reimaginings of films. Although it might be a rare occurrence, there are times when the remake of an existing film somehow manages to be just as engaging, creative, and successful as its predecessor. Take Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019), for instance, or Cecil B. Demille’s 1956 masterpiece, The Ten Commandments, which is a reimagining of his own 1923 silent epic of the same name. But these occasions are rare, and mostly we’re forced to stomach shot-for-shot remakes of brilliant films that have nothing new to say, that barely even try to give us more than what we already have. The Crow, directed by Rupert Sanders, which is a reimagining of Alex Proyas’ 1994 gothic superhero film of the same name, does not fit neatly into either of these categories. Stripped of the highly stylized visual storytelling and raw emotion that made the 1994 film so visceral and memorable, this new film holds us at an arm’s length, barely scratching the surface of the complexities of love and grief.
In a nameless rehab facility that looks and feels more like a prison, two lonely and misunderstood souls find one another. There is Shelly (British singer FKA twigs), who once had a promising career as a singer and is now on the run from something dark and sinister, and there is Eric (Bill Skarsgård), a tattooed loner who is struggling with anger and self-harm stemming from unknown childhood trauma. They bond over their shared love of music and manage to find in one another a kind of wholeness they were unable to find anywhere else. But it isn’t long before Shelly’s past comes back for her.
After escaping the rehab facility, they experience a brief moment of bliss before they are brutally murdered in their apartment. They are suffocated and forced to watch as they each take their last breath. But Eric is soon resurrected and finds himself in a kind of supernatural limbo where he meets Kronos (Sami Bouajila), a spirit guide who informs him that if he wants to save Shelly and return to the land of the living, he must destroy the man who ordered their murders, Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), an immortal crime boss who made a pact with the Devil for eternal life and in exchange sends the souls of the innocent to Hell.
While the 1994 adaptation is a fast-paced revenge fantasy clocking in at just over 90 minutes, in which Eric (played by the late Brandon Lee) methodically hunts down his and Shelly’s murderers, this new incarnation is slow and tedious, taking nearly the whole film to set up Eric’s transformation into The Crow. By the time Eric starts cutting people to ribbons, it’s far too late for us to care.
Instead of wallowing in Eric’s grief with him, Sanders uses much of the runtime to develop Shelly and Eric’s relationship, with the intention clearly being to give Shelley more to do so that she wouldn’t be branded simply as the Dead Wife. Unfortunately, this effort goes to waste thanks to a cliché script that fails to give their relationship any kind of depth or weight. We spend nearly half the movie with them, but it never feels like we really know them. They just seem like a couple of Tumblr-era emo kids, a characterization that is extremely dated. Additionally, having Shelly be just as big of a presence in the film when she’s alive means we are never given enough time to mourn her, to feel the endlessness of her loss.
This problem is compounded by the fact that Bill Skarsgård feels utterly miscast in this role. In contrast to both Brandon Lee’s portrayal of Eric and his characterization in the comic book, Skarsgård is reserved and skittish, lacking in the charisma needed to pull off an anti-hero like Eric. Unfortunately, not even the leather jacket makes him look cool. Those who are familiar with Brandon Lee’s darkly funny portrayal of a character that is both man and monster will be disappointed to find that Skarsgård’s is frustratingly incompetent, someone you simply cannot bring yourself to root for.
While this new adaptation of the 1989 comic book series by James O’Barr certainly cannot be accused of being derivative of its punk-rock predecessor, that is not exactly a compliment. Inextricably tied to the mid-90s with its grunge aesthetics and soundtrack, the 1994 version is also highly stylized, playing into the source material’s supernatural elements and over the top villains. It feels like a comic book. For this new adaptation, Sanders takes the opposite approach. The look and feel of the movie, while gritty at times, is stripped down and bare. If it was not called The Crow, it would be very easy to mistake it for a John Wick spin-off, but because Skarsgård is not Keanu Reeves, the action scenes in this film are deeply mediocre.
Cinematographer Steve Annis paints the film in muted greys and blues, the light and shadows dimensionless. It is a murky-looking film, made entirely out of ink. Director Rupert Sanders trades the comic book’s seedy, hellscape of the Detroit slums for sleek skyscrapers and lavish penthouses in an unnamed city. The villains in this film are not low level-thugs, but interchangeable, faceless figures in pantsuits, representing a capitalistic evil – those who have sold their souls for wealth and power. It’s in interesting idea that is never fully explored and is made even more ridiculous by the addition of a demonic crime boss. The exposition given in the film surrounding the lore of Roeg and his crime ring is laughably thin and even confusing at times. The film awkwardly cuts back and forth between Shelly and Eric being in love and the villains doing villain things for the first half of the film, and because the villains are uninteresting and bland those scenes are a slog to get through.
Narratively, this convoluted plot takes away from Eric’s journey as a character and gets in the way of exploring his guilt and grief to the point it doesn’t really feel like it matters. The comic book’s complicated morality proves to be too much for the filmmakers to handle, and they end up completely flattening it as a result. The violent and ugly feelings that so often haunt us when we lose someone we love, and that were so palpable in the 1994 version, don’t exist in this film. That’s because Eric’s motivation is completely different. It isn’t revenge for his loss – it’s hope. Hope that he can restore his and Shelly’s souls to the land of the living. Whether or not this ends up happening, this slight alteration has ripple effects throughout the film, changing its morality from something honest and hard to stomach to something dishonest yet far easier to excuse.
The Crow might not to try to replicate the magic of the original adaptation, but its deviations from the source material fail to give us anything new to think about. Bogged down by lore that feels confusing and ill-conceived, The Crow sets itself apart from the original in all of the worst ways imaginable and in doing so resurrects a story that should have stayed dead and buried.
Score: 8/24
Recommended for you: ‘The Crow’ at 30 – Review
