I had never seen the original The Crow until the morning I went to see the remake. I had no idea what I was missing out on that I forgot how great 90’s gothic horror is. However, I was very disappointed by director Rupert Sanders’ version of the anti hero.
The Crow is technically a remake of the 1994 film that is both based on the iconic comic book series created by James O’Barr. However, it doesn’t seem to follow really anything the first film had to offer besides the main premise and character names. Bill Skarsgard portrays Eric Draven and FKA twigs plays the love interest Shelly Webster. After meeting and falling in love, a group finds the two and kills them both. Eric is granted the powers of the crow which he is able to regenerate and basically be immortal. He is brought back to life and starts a revenge tour against those who ended Shelly’s life.
I recently watched another action film featuring Bill Skarsgard early this year, Boy Kills World, where he is equally gruesome and badass. However, where The Crow fell short was the poor writing. Skarsgard is not a bad actor at all, but the lines he was given in this movie were just terrible. He did the best he could do with them. On the other hand, I did not like the performance FKA twigs gave. Her emotions were bland and the way she portrayed the character really didn’t have me connected to her or the relationship between the two at all.
Another problem I had was that they spent the entire first half of the movie. This was the relationship between Eric and Shelly. Now I am not saying to not include it, heck in the original we barely got to see them two together, but I just wish it wasn’t so slow with building that foundation and would have rather seen more of the transformation of Eric into the Crow.
With that being said, the film did kind of pick up towards the end. The choreography of most of the fight scenes were well done and was unique. It just wasn’t the same death over and over again but threw a little John Wick creativity in there to spice things up. Another thing that I appreciated was the soundtrack. The variety in music was good and I noticed my head bobbing a couple times.
Final Thoughts:
Like stated previously, I watched the original The Crow just prior to watching this one. I am still trying to decide whether or not that was a good idea. I wanted the remake to be so much like the original and it just fell flat. The story was just not good and couldn’t be brought up by the performances and just by the few action sequences. I will probably not revisit this movie soon but if you like Skarsgard, go right ahead.
