The Crow returns to cinema, stuck somewhere between the living and the dead

Bill Skarsgård and FKA twigs in The Crow. Photo: Larry Horricks / Lionsgate

By Noelle Adams

29 Aug 2024

Thirty years after the release of supernatural revenge actioner The Crow, a quintessential nineties movie, a new reimagining of James O’Barr’s comic is here, starring Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs.

The Crow’s return to cinemas has been a long time coming – quite the opposite, in fact, from how the bird flies. The 1994 film, based on the indie comic by James O’Barr, was a critical and commercial success, leading to three other entries (two of them straight to video) in the supernatural revenge anthology series, along with a TV show that lasted a single season. After 2005, though, the franchise slinked back to the grave, and various attempts to faithfully revisit the on-page source material were unable to escape Development Hell. Not even with Jason Momoa attached to the star.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djSKp_pwmOA

Still, it turns out you can’t keep a heartbroken lover down, even when he’s been murdered. So, thirty years after the release of the original film adaptation The Crow, there’s a new Eric (Bill Skarsgård) back from the dead and dressed up in Goth mode to hunt down the thugs who deprived him and soulmate Shelly (FKA Twigs) of happiness. The weird thing is that it feels like very little time has passed because The Crow (2024) has all the sensibilities of an “edgy” superhero film made in the late nineties or early noughties. Think Blade or Thomas Jane’s The Punisher.

While it admirably keeps its CGI effects low-key, The Crow has a weird sense of cheapness. Adding to that, the film has been very clearly shot, at least in part, in Eastern Europe.

Even if nineties teens remove their rosy nostalgia lenses (or welding goggles), Alex Proyas’s The Crow remains an example of a hyper-stylised comic book adaptation.

The new Crow, under the direction of Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman, Ghost in the Shell) goes the gritty, grounded route, but develops an identity crisis in the process – because one can’t spend half the film building up a star-crossed love story between young rebels and then force-feeding a katana to multiple goons in an opera house. The latter is the film’s climactic action sequence and is so overblown in its violence that viewers could be watching the opening credits of Deadpool & Wolverine again. Except, in The Crow’s case, it’s deadly serious.

Straining to be resonant

And that is The Crow’s biggest problem. It’s straining to be supposedly resonant in every shot, without any credible emotional foundation. It’s more about looking cool than delivering any felt experience.

So there is no believable warmth or passion in Eric and Shelly’s relationship. They just come across like two hot stars in a high-end fragrance commercial, and their declarations of love, like every line in the movie, are delivered in stilted seven-word servings. “I need you to love me harder,” Twigs’s spaced-out Shelly tells Eric.

Bill Skarsgård as Eric in The Crow. (Photo: Lionsgate)

As a sidenote, of course, the villain in The Crow has to be a member of the “old guard”. Danny Huston’s Vincent Roeg is a Faustian figure who preys on struggling, slum-dwelling youths while he enjoys a life of wealth and privilege, celebrating the classical arts and swanning around in his country estate. There’s that powerful thematic depth again.

At least Skarsgård does an admirable job in conveying Eric’s obviously long-suppressed dark side. He also delivers the action hero goods in a more interesting way, as Eric isn’t skilled; just motivated, fighting through his pain, even if he can’t be killed.

However, again it’s more about appearances, so the audience is treated to innumerable shots of Skarsgård’s abs, and the tattoos that make him look like a desk in detention. Audiences don’t ever see Eric grieve or rage convincingly. Watching Shelly sink into the depths of the afterlife, he doesn’t try to swim after her on regaining his breath, rage at his impotence in the situation, or even yell for help. He just wanders around Purgatory morosely until he’s given a rundown of his new powers.

For the record, The Crow (2024) is fully Eric’s story. There is no good cop or skateboarding little girl for him to engage with, or help frame the story for viewers, as there was back in the nineties.

Bland all round

The Crow isn’t terrible, but it is bland. On the visual front, the lifelessness is surprising from Sanders who has a history of delivering striking shots. Here, though, he seems more concerned with Zack Snyder-esque slo-mo, and the most interesting part of the whole movie is the theatrical performance paired with Eric’s opera house rampage.

FKA Twigs as Shelly in The Crow. (Photo: Larry Horricks / Lionsgate)

Bill Skarsgård and FKA twigs in The Crow. (Photo: Larry Horricks / Lionsgate)

In terms of the narrative, while the 1994 film hit the ground running, this reinterpretation takes forever to get going, forcing its revenge portion to be rushed out. It also feels oddly excessive at times given how lacking in degradation Eric and Shelly’s deaths are. The retaliation doesn’t quite match the crime, especially when the most vicious part of it is directed at hired event security who weren’t even involved in the original act.

Even with Sanders reportedly banning all real guns from the set, it feels distasteful to see Eric graphically take so many shots to the chest given what happened to Brandon Lee when he played The Crow’s protagonist decades ago.

Maybe a new generation of teenagers will find something meaningful and moving in 2024’s The Crow. However, if the franchise returns to the cemetery for a few more years, it doesn’t feel like a loss at this point. A dull and brain-numbing disappointment. DM

The Crow is in cinemas from Friday, 23 August.

This article was first published in Pfangirl.

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Straining to be resonant

Bland all round