The 2024 version The Crow isn’t a rehash of the 1994 movie or the 1989 graphic novel by James O’Barr. Instead, it takes the story of a man coming back from the dead to avenge his and his dead girlfriend’s murders, but adds to it. In the process, this The Crow ends up being less than the sum of its parts. Though Bill Skarsgard as Eric, the man who ends up becoming the Crow, gives his all to this interpretation of the story, he can’t make the film around him work. Instead, this version of The Crow is a disaster on every level.
Making The Crow More Supernatural
After a prologue involving a young Eric, the present-day story of The Crow starts with Shelly (FKA twigs). She gets a call from her friend Zadie (Isabella Wei), who has sent her a video. Zadie tells her to get out of town because of what the video shows, but she can’t continue talking because there are people in her apartment. She is taken to Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), who explains to Zadie that he made a deal with the devil: in exchange for indefinite life, he will send people to hell in his place. He then whispers some demonic words, hands her a knife, and watches as she stabs herself.
At the same time, Shelly has escaped her apartment but is being pursued by someone. So she runs into a couple of cops and lets her bag, which has pills in it, fall open. She’s sent to rehab, where she meets Eric, a guy who sports a unique look and only seems to talk to her. They fall in love, but when they leave rehab, the demons of Shelly’s past catch up with them, and they’re murdered. This, of course, is when Eric comes back from the dead and starts to take vengeance on everyone involved in his and Shelly’s murders, but something feels different this time.
Strained Chemistry
The filmmakers of The Crow spend a lot of time on this setup, especially when it comes to Eric and Shelly’s relationship. The two spend a lot of time just hanging out, kissing, taking drugs, smoking, and having sex. We saw none of this in the 1994 version of the film or the graphic novel. In those versions of the story, it was Eric’s deep commitment to Shelly that convinced us they were in love. And the flashbacks to their relationship were mature and lived in. In this version, however, Eric and Shelly’s relationship comes across as a deep infatuation, but maybe not true love.
This is a product of the timeline of this version of The Crow. There was an urgency to Zadie’s message to get out. So it seems that Eric and Shelly aren’t together for very long before they’re killed. This belies the idea of a long relationship where people have gone through a lot together. As it stands, this Eric and Shelly couldn’t have been together for very long, so Eric’s need for vengeance is less believable. As is his desire to ultimately trade his soul for Shelly’s so Shelly can be brought back from the dead. This seems awfully generous for a woman he couldn’t have known for that long.
Graphic Violence
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The other thing is that this version of The Crow is very graphic. It has drugs, sex, and violence galore, and the violence in particular is pretty disturbing. While something like Deadpool may be just as violent, the movie is so good-natured that it doesn’t affect a viewer in the same way. This, however, is dark. Moreover, when Eric is killing people, it’s not always clear whether they need to be killed or if they’re just a bodyguard trying to make a living, which makes the bloodshed more disturbing.
In Conclusion
Ultimately, The Crow has an operatic quality to it that doesn’t serve the material well. There’s even a massive confrontation between Eric and a bunch of men in an Opera House. The 1994 movie and graphic novel had a dark, rain-drenched grunge look, and there’s nothing wrong with this movie not replicating it. But having it be grand is the wrong call. Eric and Shelly aren’t grand. They’re just people living their lives, and making Eric’s revenge so majestic that he brings a whole opera audience into it seems overblown and unwise, as was this movie.
The Crow is in theaters on August 23.
Movie Score: 1/10
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