Review: The Crow
INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film The Crow. Keep in mind this is but one of the many movies I watch every year, and that whatever initial grade I come up for this film could change for better or worse with time. To better keep up to date with both my thoughts on other movies and if my feelings on this film changed, follow me on Letterboxd.
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THE PLOT
Via Letterboxd: Soulmates Eric and Shelly are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living. and the dead. to put the wrong things right.
QUICK REVIEW
1994’s The Crow is a certifiable cult classic. Not only is it a monumental part in the pop cultural section of the gothic, but it’s also the movie that defines Brandon Lee’s legacy, as he died tragically while making it. We’ve gotten cheap, lesser respected, sequels, but no one has had the balls to try and remake the original - until now a whole three decades later.
2024’s version of The Crow stars Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs as the tragic couple at the core of the story, and directed by none other than Rupert Sanders who among other things directed the divisive 2017 Ghost In The Shell film adaptation.
We need to get straight to it when it comes to the Elephant in the room about this movie - the reviews have been really awful. Granted, one might argue the movie was potentially doomed from the start as the marketing for the film was met by the usual cries of “Why remake this? Who is this for?” which dimmed anticipation for it.
I’ll give the movie some faint praises first. Skarsgård, unsurprisingly, is probably the best thing about the movie. He is busting his ass to elevate this more than he should have to. The man is proving himself to be almost a chameleon in his acting and he does it again in this role. The love story is given more depth here in ways that I think does outdo the original. The supernatural elements are well executed and the visual effects are not as bad as you might have feared. There’s also some cool action moments, especially when it really goes in deep on the supernatural and macabre aesthetics of the story.
Unfortunately all those things can’t hide a script with structural issues, a bizarre decision to wait until the third act to fully use the supernatural aspect of our protagonist, incredibly dull villains, and lulls in the middle part of the story. There’s also some really lazily put-together dialogue and unlike Skarsgård, we get some performances that were so mailed in that the postage was returned on-site.
What this remake of The Crow ultimately proves to be is another mediocre and forgettable IP entry for 2024. The 1994 original was always going to be hard to match, but this was an insultingly low effort on trying to follow that oneup. While I did not loathe this to the levels other critics did, I did not enjoy myself either. You can add this to the bench of mediocre reboots from earlier in the year alongside Roadhouse. I give 2024’s The Crow a forgettable, mediocre, initial grade of C+. You have my permission to fly away from this one if you really want to.
INITIAL GRADING
