The Crow proves that the last thing a movie about trauma needs is even more trauma

The worst thing I could do, I told myself as I stepped into a theater to watch Rupert Sanders' re-imagining of The Crow, was spend too much time roping Alex Proyas' original film into my assessment of this long-gestating reboot. I'm one of those kids who used to drive too fast on empty roads late at night, blasting the original film's soundtrack, and while that emotional punch has faded a little for me, the presence of the Proyas version as a vivid and poignant piece of industro-goth pop art has not left my mind. Better then to leave the past in the past, and greet this new film on its own terms.

The trouble comes when, very early into the new film—starring Bill Skarsgård as a vengeful spirit out to take down a criminal empire—it becomes quite clear that The Crow (2024) doesn't really know what it wants “its own terms” to be. It's not a remake of the original film exactly, nor is it a straightforward new adaptation of James O'Barr's original comic, which inspired this movie franchise in the first place. It is another beast entirely, formed from countless vestigial limbs that seem to have sprouted like weeds across its entire 15-year development period, never to be trimmed off or reshaped. The results are bleak, unimaginative, and—despite the presence of a couple of bona fide Good Actors—tiresome to watch. It's a film that can't help but remind you of the original, if only because you'll be longing to rewatch that movie instead.

Skarsgård is Eric Draven, a tattooed, lanky figure whose job seems to be Trauma. He comes from a broken, violent childhood, he's covered in tattoos (including one that's just a sad poem across his back), and when we meet him, he's in one of the most brutalist rehab facilities ever committed to film, not getting better so much as getting sadder. That changes when he meets Shelly (FKA Twigs), who's also in rehab and also sad. They fall in love because…well, because the plot demands it, and because they both have tattoos. Sometime later, the henchmen of a vengeful local tycoon named Roeg (Danny Huston, doing his absolute best, God bless him) comes for Shelly for convoluted reasons not worth explaining here, killing her and Eric. Caught in a strange kind of purgatory, Eric is given the option to be guided back to the world of the living by the spirit of "The Crow," in order to right the wrong that was done to the young couple.

The goal here, in spooling out this lengthy prelude to the expected revenge story of The Crow, seems to be giving the audience some time to get to know, and therefore empathize with, Shelly and Eric, while also adding some layers to their deaths. But all it does is add more capital-T Trauma to a film that, by its very nature, is already about trauma. The very idea for The Crow came from James O'Barr losing the love of his life to a drunk driver. The backbone of the story is a revenge fantasy that allows a man to hunt down and root out the evil forces who took the one thing that mattered most to him. Giving us half an hour of Very Sad people being Very Sad together and talking about how "broken" and "hard to love" they are doesn't add anything to this. It only complicates the film's lore with vague worldbuilding that attempts to explain why Shelly and Eric were targeted, instead of just leaving their attack a random criminal act. 

But these prelude sequences, hollow though they are, aren't the film's true problem, even if they do stretch the film into the longest of the entire Crow franchise thus far. No, the real problem is once we get to the meat of the matter, to Eric's resurrection and his resulting conflict with Roeg and the dark empire he's built with powers that, believe it or not, are even more vague and distracting than Eric's crow-gifted abilities. Stylistically, The Crow is all over the place: The soundtrack drops misplaced songs that throw off the tone; Steve Annis’ camera frames Eric as a gangly mess while he's supposed to be a supernatural revenge machine; the aesthetic loses the Iggy Pop swagger of O'Barr's comic and the All Black Everything poise that made Brandon Lee so iconic back in 1994. Even the deeply expressive Skarsgård, who can make eldritch clown beasts into nightmares, can't wring emotional truth out of his character—and it gets worse when you look at the world around him. 

It's here that the comparisons to the original film cut deepest, because for all the original’s goth street cred and Hot Topic merch iconography, for all its violence and killer soundtrack choices, the 1994 version of The Crow never loses touch with an honest sense of warmth, radiating not just from Lee but from the supporting cast around him. That version of Eric, the struggling rock star who was building a life with his great love when it all came crashing down, wasn't just a sad boy who got sadder. He was a part of a community of outcasts, and when he came back, he came back for them, not just for himself and not just for Shelly. Lee's sly smile and expressive eyes made that come through, as did the original film's script, and The Crow became not just an effective Gothic revenge film, but a film about how people can save each other, and how death can teach us to value life more. There's real poetry to it, a poetry that extends the raw, open-hearted power of O'Barr's comic. This version provides none of that, just a couple of action sequences, a lot of shots of CGI wounds knitting themselves back together, and Danny Huston in serviceable villain mode.

Rupert Sanders’ The Crow emerges from its 15-year development hell not as the version of this reboot that finally clicked, but as a film that seems to have once been nine films, all hastily cobbled into something resembling a story, all of its edges smoothed off until it's flat, flimsy, and dull. It's not that remaking The Crow could never have worked, or that this version is especially offensive or hapless. It's that, despite some genuine talent in front of and behind the camera and some ideas that might have landed in another life, this film never really spreads its wings, and we're left to watch the fall. 

Director: Rupert Sanders

Writer: Zach Baylin, William Schneider

Starring: Bill Skarsgård, FKA Twigs, Danny Huston

Release Date: August 23, 2024