Film Review: THE CROW (2024): The Reimagining of the 1994 Action Picture Starts Strong Before Becoming Overly Violent and Bizarre

The Crow Review

The Crow (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Rupert Sanders, written by James O’Barr, Zach Baylin and William Josef Schneider and starring Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, Danny Huston, Josette Simon, Laura Birn, Sami Bouajila, Karel Dobrý, Jordan Bolger, Sebastian Orozco, David Bowles, Isabella Wei, Jordan Haj, Dukagjin Podrimaj and Janek Gregor.

Rupert Sanders directs an overlong reimagining of 1994’s box-office hit, The Crow, that starts off really well before nose-diving into a world of bloody violence that is way over-the-top and unsatisfying in almost every way. Since the whole movie is kind of absurd, there is some reliance on forgetting logic while watching this new picture. Sanders works some magic in the early stages of the film as it’s easy to be entertained enough to forget that what you are watching is nothing short of ridiculous.

Bill Skarsgård stars as Eric, a young man who seems to have lost a horse that was dear to him in the opening stages of the movie. The film doesn’t really give us too much information but there’s enough to just run with the overall premise of the picture. Eric is in an institution when he meets a woman named Shelly (the likable FKA twigs). Shelly is escaping almost being murdered by a group of criminals who made her friend, Zadie (Isabella Wei), become possessed and take her own life. There’s something captured on a cell phone that sheds light as to what, exactly, is going on.

Eric and Shelly hit it off instantaneously in a way that can only happen in the movies. She teasingly sticks her tongue out at Eric and the two are in awe of one another. Soon, there are a bunch of shady characters coming for Shelly so she must escape the institution with Eric’s help. They somehow get over barbed wire. They hitchhike a ride and end up in a beautiful apartment where Shelly tells Eric he smells bad but makes love to him anyway. How do they get into the apartment? She has a friend who lets her stay there but there’s no explanation on how she got the key.

The romance blossoms between the two weirdos played by Skarsgård and twigs and it’s enjoyable enough for the audience to forget the inanity of it all. Alas, Zadie’s killers are soon on the trail of Shelly and seem to kill her and Eric. Then, Eric wakes up in an alternate reality where Wickham (David Bowles) informs him that he must come to terms with an unfortunate reality that involves the possibility of Shelly’s spirit going straight to hell.

While the main villains of the film are the sinister Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston) and the blonde-haired Marion (Laura Birn), there are many side villains that Eric must take on in order to get vengeance for Shelly’s murder. There are a few graphic scenes that occur that are watchable before the movie takes us to an opera house where the movie loses ground and completely misses the mark. The viewer doesn’t want to see Eric slicing and dicing people. Eric should be trying to get the people directly responsible for Shelly’s death. Instead, the movie sends tons of henchmen after Eric with unsatisfying results.

Bill Skarsgård is OK in the lead role. He plays weird well and twigs is a bright new talent who has what it takes to make us believe Eric would fall for her. Had the film not gone over-the-top with wall-to-wall violence and gore, it would have been much better. When it focuses on the romance, it more or less works.

There’s no reason to compare this to the 1994 film but the two pictures are like night and day with the 1994 film excelling in many ways. Whereas I liked twigs and wanted to see more of her in the movie, it also would have been nice if the filmmakers paid more attention to following the basic structure of the 1994 movie. Don’t call this The Crow and then go buck wild with craziness if you’re not going to be faithful to the source material. If the 1994 movie was this insane, I would have remembered it more. I remember liking the 1994 picture better than this one, but that film was out 30 years ago. My memory of it is a bit hazy.

Danny Huston is a serviceable villain and Laura Birn is somewhat menacing, but the movie needed more of a plot that drives home the action and less scenes of intense violence. While the original was full of violence, it was also more enjoyable overall because it felt more comic book-like. This new one seems forced and too wild for its own good.

This new version disappoints even in minor ways. At the institution early on, a counselor quotes Ernest Hemingway, but the movie doesn’t let the counselor finish the quote. That quote may be more interesting than anything else The Crow has to offer. Bill Skarsgård isn’t bad in the movie. He dons the requisite makeup well and looks the part, but he doesn’t bring the movie past the level of the old film either. The beginning of The Crow reboot is actually quite decent. However, it eventually loses its way in the chaos.

Rating: 5.5/10

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