Ahhh, The Crow. The first adaptation of James O’Barr’s comic book has a legacy that will live on due to the tragic passing of star Brandon Lee, and many consider it something of a classic. People still dress up as the character now, and when we think of vengeful spirits we think of the Crow first. But a modern take on The Crow has been in the works for almost two decades (seriously, our first posts ever were about this) with multiple filmmakers and actors (Mark Wahlberg, Bradley Cooper, Jason Momoa, to name a few) involved until it was finally settled on director Rupert Sanders and star Bill Skarsgard. Fans were initially intrigued by Skarsgard, known for creepy turns in IT and John Wick, but turned on the film once they got a glimpse of his emo-style look.
Suffice it to say, The Crow is meeting a lot of headwinds. The franchise has been piss-poor for ages, though. None of the prior sequels have been worth a damn, so this one comes in with a very low bar to scale. And frankly, The Crow is much better than those while still having serious problems in direction, pace, and characterization. Fans of Eric Draven won’t see the version of the character they’re kinda familiar with until VERY late into the story, and even then it comes with a severe turn in tone that is jarring to say the least.
Skarsgard plays Eric (the Draven is left out), whose troubled childhood has led him to a rehab facility where he meets Shelly (singer FKA Twigs), another tortured young soul. And I mean that in quite the literal sense. The two fall in love, two broken people finding one another and navigating a shitty world together. Skarsgard and Twigs have surprising chemistry, and she in particular is surprisingly good as Shelly, who strengthens Eric while being quite vulnerable herself.
Much of the film is about Eric and Shelly’s love for one another, which is nice but also drags along at such a glacial pace that casual viewers will get bored. It’s deep into the movie when the inevitable occurs; Eric and Shelly are both murdered by twisted, dark forces, but only Eric returns to seek revenge for what happened. The story differs greatly from the ’94 film and O’Barr’s comic. Shelly’s soul has been damned due to Faustian bargain struck by her mother with the immortal Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston, always one of the best villainous actors around) who sends their souls to Hell.
Those looking for the sexy avenging hero version of the Crow might be disappointed. Skarsgard’s look is grungy and sinewy, like Machine Gun Kelly if he had just done a stint in Oz. His transformation comes with a learning curve and Eric spends much of the film getting brutalized, only to heal from his lethal wounds…well, most of the time. One thing that can’t be said is that this take on The Crow is a copy of what came before. The look is different, the style is different, and if it wasn’t for the basic plot beats (Eric literally follows a flying crow around) you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a new property. Coincidentally, Skarsgard’s brother Alexander was up for the lead role at one point. And so was Huston’s nephew, Jack Huston, so this cast could’ve looked very different with stronger familial ties.
The script by King Richard writer Zach Baylin and William Schneider has its moments but is shockingly bad much of the time. Eric’s vengeful journey isn’t the least bit compelling, with no mystery and no twists to speak of. Other than Huston’s Roeg the villains are bland and forgettable, and characters that were introduced just sorta vanish like they were cut from a film that has been chopped up and pieced together repeatedly, which it probably was. But the biggest issue is the plodding pace. While faithful to the original comic, the film moves too slowly for a mainstream summertime feature that most see as a dark superhero story. If you’re not 100% invested in Eric and Shelly this is going to be a painfully dull experience to sit through.
Sanders, who is best known for Snow White and the Huntsman and the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie, justifies the R-rating with buckets bad CGI blood and gruesome gore. There’s a ghastly sequence set at an opera house that will prove divisive but for me it was a complete miss. By far the biggest action setpiece of the film, it features a version of the Crow that is closer to a zombie from The Walking Dead and not like the protagonist we want to see get retribution for his dead lover. Maybe that’s the point, and if so it was a poor decision to go such a route. A shame, too, because Skarsgard nails the physicality of the action easily. He took on this role straight from shooting the hyper-violent Boy Kills World, and it shows. Skarsgard is lean, mean, brooding, and badass. The Crow exceeds expectations but this goth angel of death never quite soars.
The Crow is in theaters now.
