The Crow

Remakes and especially reboots rarely make sense. There are exceptions to the rule that have the aura of timeless stories that need to be retold from time to time, maybe even for each new generation. But still, reboots are usually uncalled for. The new, uncalled-for reading of The Crow, penned by Zach Baylin and William Josef Schneider, and directed by Rupert Sanders, comes close to the top of that list, as it doesn’t do any justice either to James O’Barr’s comic book series or to Alex Proyas’ 1994 cult classic.

The developmental hell the movie was stuck in for a decade and half, with multiple screenwriters, directors and lead actors attached to it, really shows, from its poorly timed release to the reception from both critics and wider audiences. Although it is not the worst movie of the year – or of the month for that matter - proceed with extreme caution, especially if you are a fan of the original.

The core of the plot is the same as in O’Barr’s first issue and in Proyas’ film: guided by the titular bird, our protagonist Eric (Bill Skarsgard) comes back from the dead to resurrect his murdered girlfriend Shelly (the musician FKA Twigs) by executing revenge on the people who murdered her. To be successful in his mission, he needs his love for her to be true and pure. Otherwise, he becomes vulnerable and unable to save her from hell.

However, this time we get the backstory of Eric’s and Shelly’s love instead of snippets of flashbacks that worked perfectly well in the original The Crow. We see them meet in a rehab clinic where he is treated for his undefined addiction while she uses it as a hiding place from the people from her shady past. We see them bonding over tattoos and poetry, falling in love, escaping the clinic when her whereabouts are revealed to the baddies and enjoying maybe days of happiness before they are found and murdered. The trouble is that the love story itself seems generic and pretty much devoid of any human interaction, while still demanding for the actors in the sense of “chops” and chemistry. While Skarsgard kinda-sorta handles the former, FKA Twigs is capable of nothing more than existing in the frame.

The second major problem of the film is the generic main villain whose name – Vincent Roeg, clearly forged of the names of two genre movie legends, the actor Vincent Price and the filmmaker Nicholas Roeg – is the only thing interesting about him. He is also imagined as something “otherworldly”, but actually is a cross between a “Faustian” mortal man and a generic soul-corrupting vampire with a ridiculous “voice” that would not pass the trials for the band Cattle Decapitation. Danny Huston does his best to play him in a restrained way, but alas, he pales in comparison the satanist mobster and his gang from the original.

The third and cardinal sin is the complete lack of style, which is something to be expected from Sanders, known for crap like Snow White And The Huntsman and the live-action remake of The Ghost In The Shell. The nameless metropolis the plot is set in, the characters’ appearances and the protagonist’s mask all seem like something bought from a garage sale inspired by Todd Philips’ Joker. An occasional needle drop of something gothic, industrial or apocalyptic neo-folk won’t save the day, as it is clear that Sanders & company don’t understand the subculture or don’t want to get into it. It might be a deliberate choice to make a movie for new subculture-free audiences, but the stylish source material deserves at least some effort. The only redeemable thing about it is one action sequence by the end of the film that is deliciously gory, but it’s not worth the pain of sitting through the rest of the 111 minutes.

At this point it would be fair to say that every movie should be judged for its own qualities, and not compared to others, but the producers, the screenwriters and the helmer of The Crow remake had it coming when they decided to “resurrect” Eric and Shelly, since they had to choose from a reasonably large body of O’Barr’s work and characters from the series. In their defence, the original franchise outstayed its welcome after the second instalment at best, but remaking a cult movie is not a small task. The original was not a masterpiece and back in the day was hyped primarily for uncinematic reasons – the whole symbolism of the untimely death of Brandon Lee on the set of the superhero-coming-from-the-dead-movie, rather than the cinematic ones and that it was finished despite the major setback with the help of the CGI in the beta-testing mode. But it was a cool, narratively economical and enjoyable action flick with some interesting characters, well-made sequences, great music and lots of style to it. Pretty much everything the 2024 version of The Crow is not.