When images – and eventually a trailer – for this new version of The Crow was released the response, to be diplomatic, was not good. Aside from endless unfavourable comparisons to the Brandon Lee version from 1994, the public was kind of shocked by several choices made here. Why does the main character look like he has a Simple Jack haircut with Soundcloud rapper tattoos? Why is he wielding a Mall Ninja katana? Why is the dialogue so bad? Why is all the promotional material made for this movie, intended to get people into theatres, having the opposite effect?
But we put all of that aside to sit down and watch this movie to see if it could stand on its own two feet, free from expectations of newcomers, fans of the original comic and the 1994 movie.
“Bill Skarsgård takes on the iconic role of THE CROW in this modern reimagining of the original graphic novel by James O’Barr. Soulmates Eric (Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA twigs) 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,” reads the film’s official synopsis.
It’s a good place to start with our main characters in Skarsgård and, urgh, “””FKA twigs”””. To be blunt: both put in terrible work here. Skarsgård is a good actor, we know this. He has already impressed under a heavy amount of makeup in the It movies and we’ve seen him in other “heightened reality” movies like John Wick 4. He seems half asleep here in this role which you can argue is part of his character in this story (a drug addict), but even when he’s going full tilt trying to kill bad guys, he just looks and sound uninteresting. We also, for the full almost two hours of runtime, cannot get past his terrible tattoos and other choices made by the wardrobe department. It is almost impossible to take any actor seriously, as they try convey the deepest pain a human can fathom, all while they have little cartoons scribbled on their face and the equivalent of “live, laugh love, but emo” written on themselves.
FKA twigs is free from looking like a clown, unlike Skarsgård, but it’s very clear that this musician does not have the chops to make the move to acting. Her performance was far too inexperienced, wooden and unconvincing.
The rest of the cast is simply not worth mentioning, mostly being made up of nameless goons and riff raff that are usually killed off soon after introduction. The main bad guy, played by Danny Huston, is barely in the movie. When we do see him, he has goals that make no sense and absolutely zero air of menace. A nothing villain for a nothing movie.
It should be clear here that we really lay these problems at the feet of the script, and hold the cast far less accountable. We don’t think there is a single line of dialogue in this movie that sounds like something a human would say, even in the reality of a comic book movie.
The story may be the worst use of runtime we have seen this year and we can’t entirely explain why without spoilers. What we can say is that is spends all of its time on the most boring parts you can think of and rushes as fast as possible through anything that could be considered fun to watch.
Do you like potholes? Storylines that go nowhere? Zero internal logic or real character justification? Oh wait, you don’t like any of that? Damn we thought we’d found a part of the movie someone would like.
We usually comment that many movies are let down by script revisions or some simple edits, but that isn’t the case for this movie. An entirely new script would have been needed or an edit performed by a miracle worker.
We can give The Crow some points in competency in the visual department. It is set up and shot decently enough and you can see what the movie is trying to show you at all times.
The effects are, very surprisingly, done really well. This version of The Crow takes a bit longer to heal compared to his other counterparts, and there are a few scenes of viscera as his body is stitched back together that we really liked. At one point we thought the movie would steer into the direction of this – the pain and horror of being an immortal – but no, it only happens two or three times.
The fight scenes are so few and far between that they can be counted on one hand and the music choices are simply bizarre and ill fitting.
When you read or watch other reviews for this movie you may find even more criticism in the form of comparisons to that 1994 movie. We tried to steer clear of them here but we can’t not end by saying that it’s rather shocking how poor this attempt is. We’re not saying that the 1994 movie is some gold standard and we don’t even have any nostalgia for it, but it runs rings around this new version and has us asking what was the point of returning to this franchise if so little was done with it?
The Crow is a movie that will satisfy no one. Fans of the character will find this incarnation shallow and unable to grasp what makes it special. People who just want some fun action will be disappointed by the distinct lack of action, and what is here isn’t particularly fun. Superhero fans will find next to nothing to latch onto and general audiences will be repulsed by the bad decisions and unlikeable characters.
FINAL SCORE: 4 OUT OF 10.
