The Crow (2024) | Film Review

James O’Barr’s The Crow comic series was originally inspired both by the tragic death of his fiancée, and a horrific true-crime story on a couple who were murdered over a knock-off wedding ring. Love and devotion permeated the pages as the original mourning anti-hero, Eric Draven, was a young musician who is brought back from the dead to avenge the murders of himself and his beloved fiancée, Shelly. The forces that accomplish this were wrapped up in a gritty mythology tied to an elusive crow, a guiding force determined to assist Eric’s plight to “set the wrong things right”. In 2024, director Rupert Sanders reimagines this story for a modern generation.

If you are worried about a putrid retread of the 1994 film, writers Zach Baylin and William Josef Schneider notably resurrect the core concept while crafting a wildly unique take on the material. Eric and Shelly (Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs) have vastly different backgrounds and motivations welding them together. Then this story heads full steam ahead into the supernatural with tie-ins to a mystical limbo world, where Eric learns of his powers via repeated exposition dumps with an enigmatic ferryman, and a menacing antagonist known as Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), a villainous manipulator of unknown demonic origin.

This iteration begins as Eric and Shelly meet, fall in love, and taste their untimely mutual demise. This early section of the film affords a greater understanding of Eric’s love for Shelly and their growing bond. While FKA Twigs struggles to elevate the rather mundane early meanderings of their relationship building and vastly empty caricature of the character as written, Bill Skarsgård immerses himself in equal parts grief, emotional growth, and rage. Skarsgård is an actor who gives his all to his art, and single-handedly carries and vests our interest in the film, even as we wade through this first act of wandering montages and elaborate tattoos. Skarsgård makes this Eric Draven his own, not necessarily rising above Brandon Lee, but rather definitively standing apart.

Danny Huston has been a villain-for-hire for years now, and this performance arrives as generically as it is written. Huston is a talented actor, unfortunately Roeg feels no more enigmatic nor captivating as anything else seen on screen. Vincent Roeg never appears as any true threat to our avenging angel, nor are his henchmen (and woman) ever afforded any personality traits that separate one from the other.

It is notable that this film veers off course from both the original source material and the infamous 1994 film, as we should all praise a remake attempting to create its own path while honoring the basic bones of the original story. Unfortunately, The Crow also happens to be incredibly boring, which is the severest of cinematic crimes.

Director Rupert Sanders (Snow White & the Huntsman) delivers a film that plays out at a glacier’s pace, taking far too long with too little engagement before the audience finally arrives at Eric’s plight. The action scenes, when they occur, are dizzying macabre delights, yet rarely even take place. The Crow does not need to be a zippy quick-cut of movement and fluidity, but when the love story propelling the narrative fails to connect and there is nothing else to supplement it (except for one standout set-piece as Eric eviscerates an opera house), then unfortunately you have a film that is more about checking watches than raising heartbeats.

1994’s The Crow is a film seeped in love and tragedy, both behind and in front of the camera. The filmmakers who created this take wisely evade many of the trappings found in modern remakes, choosing to spruce up the supernatural elements and flesh this concept out. If only the writing and direction could have kept up with the maniacally gleeful effort Bill Skarsgård puts in, this Crow could have left audiences with something a bit more magical.