To start this review with an endorsement: fans of the 1994 version of The Crow, directed by Alex Proyas and starring the late Brandon Lee, who tragically died from an on-set accident during filming, have every right to protest the existence of Lionsgate’s The Crow. With how beloved and essential that film has become to Lee’s legacy, this modern reimagining with Bill Skarsgård (IT, (2017), Boy Kills World (2023)) and singer/actress FKA Twigs (Honey Boy (2019)) is an absolute insult to the original movie in every possible way. I mean no offense with these disparaging remarks, but they must be said to emphasize how objectively useless remaking The Crow (1994) was as a concept and in execution.
For one, The Crow’s celebrated source materials — both the original film and James O’Barr’s graphic novel — are certainly well-known, but not enough to justify this film’s $50 million production price tag. Second, after seeing the final product, it clearly wasn’t made for the 14-year-olds the trailers seemed to cater towards because the graphic violence and occasional Skarsgård ass shot prohibit that demographic from being able to see it. Finally, this gothic romance remake has been cycling through directors and writers since 2008 before it eventually landed with Rupert Sanders (Ghost in the Shell (2017)) to direct and Zach Baylin (King Richard (2021), Creed III (2023)) to write. Unfortunately, yet predictably, neither creative could rescue this failure from its doomed fate.
The original comic book adaptation follows Eric Draven (Lee) and his girlfriend, Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas), who live in a crime-filled city and end up brutally murdered on Devil’s Night. For those who don’t know, Devil’s Night is an informal holiday where folks of all ages can participate in some mischief. It’s almost like The Purge (2013) but for pranksters. After Draven is resurrected and given enhanced abilities through the legend of a crow, he sets off down a path of revenge against the criminals who killed them. This iteration of The Crow follows a similar narrative, except Baylin’s screenplay leaves out the increasingly relevant societal commentary seen in Proyas’s version. Instead, he opts to expand on the story’s paint-by-numbers mythological aspects.
The most notable change is that Eric and Shelly’s killers are no longer seedy criminals from the streets of Detroit. Here, an ancient crime lord named Roeg, played by Danny Houston (Children of Men (2006)) fulfills his end of a deal with the devil by sending him innocent souls in exchange for immortality. If this sounds like the most generic plot in the world, that’s because it is. To take it one step further, Houston, who does his best with the atrocious dialogue provided, jarringly feels like he’s playing the same character he did in Wonder Woman (2017). It’s also painfully apparent that Tilda Swinton inspired Marian (Laura Birn), Roeg’s right-hand woman, as the character is distractingly styled and directed as if she’s Swinton.
A decent third of the film’s runtime is devoted to exploring Roeg’s (Houston) motivations and storyline; between this, the fight sequences, and scenes of FKA Twigs dancing in the woods, there’s almost no time to develop either of its two leads or their relationship – a baffling choice given that the film is a romantic fantasy thriller. Aside from Twigs and Skarsgård sharing zero chemistry, their romance is inauthentic and beyond ridiculous, making it impossible to buy into their whole soulmate shtick. It’s easy to write off Twigs’s shoddy performance given that she isn’t an actor by trade, but there’s no excuse for Skarsgård, a more than capable performer who turns in the stiffest performance of his career thus far.
The film’s first half jumps between time, highlighting cringe-inducing moments from Eric and Shelly’s relationship. The two meet at a rehabilitation facility where both are patients. However, aside from what can be inferred from their meeting place, we learn nothing more about them besides how they love each other and that Shelly dabbles in music. That’s it. In an almost two-hour movie, that is all the character development the script bothers to provide in favor of Danny Houston’s cartoon villainy.
In storytelling, a character’s actions should inform the subsequent plot development. It’s the idea of cause and effect. In The Crow, scenes and story beats are stitched together using the thinnest connective tissue, making every event inconsequential to the one that follows. The choppy editing only makes these problems more apparent. The film moves between random events — past, present, from our world to the afterlife — with no rhyme or reason, rendering these nonsensical plot additions incomprehensible. It’s clear the editors were trying to piece together some semblance of a movie with the footage filmed, but the result is less than coherent.
From small choices like Skarsgård’s hilarious tattoos of phrases such as “Good Boy” or a question mark (because he’s a mystery… duh!) to more significant decisions like casting chemistry-less leads in a movie that hinges on their romantic relationship, nothing is redeeming about this “reimagining” aside from a few well-choreographed and gory action sequences. With so many supposedly good films getting shelved in favor of a tax write-off, one must wonder why The Crow ever saw the light of day. The movie’s tagline is “Love Never Dies,” but you may want to by the time it’s over.
Review Courtesy of Ethan Dayton
Feature Image Credit to Lionsgate via Screen Rant