THE CROW: An Exercise In Why

It would be far too easy to go into a film like The Crow (2024) and spend the entire article comparing it to the original but that wouldn’t be any fun, we all already know how amazing the original was. What would be much more interesting (to me, and hopefully for you) is dissecting this iteration and trying to come to a conclusion as to whether or not this was a film worthy of your time and attention. I’m going to be fair, I’m going to be as down the middle as possible but I’m also not going to hold back. If something didn’t work (and there is a lot that didn’t work here) I’m going to highlight it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll also be hyping up the things the movie did well, if I can think of any.

Since the original The Crow was released there have been three sequels, all following different protagonists, and a long list of false starts attempting to get a reboot or reimagining off the ground. At one point Jason Momoa was attached to star but even that version faded away. That leads us to now and the Rupert Sanders (Snow White and The Huntsman, Ghost in The Shell) directed film we’re here to talk about. From a script by Zach Baylin and William Schneider, The Crow (2024) once again follows Eric Draven (this time played by Bill Skarsgard) as he attempts to “set the wrong things right” after he and his girlfriend Shelly (FKA Twigs) are murdered and that, my friends, is where the similarities end.

If it doesn’t work, force it

The thing that makes the character of The Crow great is that we care about and root for them to succeed. We root for them because we care about them. Whether it’s Eric Draven or one of the many other characters who’ve carried the mantle, the reason it works always comes back to, because we care. Here we have very little to care about and therefore basically nothing to root for. The characters of Eric and Shelly are drawn as flawed people which is great, that’s fine, nobody is perfect but here they took it to the extreme and left them with very few, if any, redeeming qualities. Eric suffers a traumatic childhood event that leads him to grow up covered in garage tattoos and placed in what was either a prison or a highly guarded jail-like rehab facility. It was never made clear. Of course events lead to Shelly being placed in the same facility and a very forced love story begins.

There really isn’t a way to tell how long they were together in the jail-rehab-prison-whatever it is facility but with the help of two scenes they apparently fall in love and decide to escape. Honestly as far as jailbreaks go, this one was pretty silly, they just went out a window and jogged across the yard never to be seen again. No one came looking. It didn’t seem to matter that they escaped to anyone other than the people who want Shelly dead. Why do they want Shelly dead you may ask? Well she has a video of Danny Huston (the big bad, who sold his soul to live forever as long as he sends innocent souls to hell) doing some magic words into her ear that forces her to do a murder.

Two problems and a positive

The performances were all fairly wooden and the chemistry between Twigs and Skarsgard was virtually nonexistent. We were to believe that these two were soulmates and that even death couldn’t stop their love, that Eric was sent back to get revenge for the both of them. The problem was, they way it was all set up, we didn’t believe for a second that they were in love, what we were fed was a fling. A month of lust. Two people more worried about partying than they were about setting goals or building a future. I just didn’t buy into it in the least.

They weren’t the only ones who seemed to have an issue with their characters though, nearly every performance that was turned in was either over or under-cooked. Nobody really brought it and it was a little bit sad. Cookie cutter characters carrying creativity carelessly. In other words, we have seen it all before and seen it better. So many tropes that are being overused these days were on full display. The “under water dead and drifting apart from our loved one” that is so popular right now was featured more than once. The “let’s juxtapose a bloody fight scene against a strange musical choice” (in this case the opera) was another obvious one. The film just never found its own identity.

The one shining spot that I can point out is the cinematography, the film is at least visually interesting to look at. The colors popped from the very first scene. The shot choices were never dull, the camera never got bored. The movie is a good one for the eyes and that’s only if you have the sound off and don’t try to follow the story. It looks great.

It all comes down to this

As far as movies based on The Crow go, it isn’t the worst but it’s also not top three. I’ll let you decide which one I think it’s better than. It isn’t something that I’ll be watching again and I can’t really recommend it to my friends. It is a movie that exists that I have watched. That is what The Crow (2024) is. I had hope for this, though not too much hope, and it let me down at every turn. I went in with an open mind, I knew that it wouldn’t be able to touch the classic but I didn’t think it would be so far off that I didn’t really enjoy it. It had a good start. The foundations were strong but someone dug the holes too deep and the ideas fell in and didn’t quite make it back out.