Can one great scene save a bad movie? The Crow provides the answer to that question: no. This gothic superhero film is the second movie to adapt James O’Barr’s 1989 comic book series, with the first being a cult classic 1994 movie starring Brandon Lee. Lee infamously died during the production of that film, meaning that The Crow has become a monument to a man who left us too soon. Alex Proyas, the director of the ’94 film, once said, “It’s not just a movie that can be remade. It’s one man’s legacy. And it should be treated with that level of respect.”
Well, respect has gone out the window because what we have here is a frighteningly dull film that will forever live in the shadow of the original. It’s not like The Crow is known for being a successful franchise. That ’94 movie spawned three critically panned sequels, but none of those movies dared to touch the character of Eric Draven until now. Bill Skarsgård becomes the second actor to play Eric after Lee in a movie, and the results here are a bit disastrous. His performance isn’t bad, but the movie around him does a disservice to the character.
It’s clear from the start that The Crow is not trying to remake the 1994 film. Instead, this is an adaptation of the characters, and it’s incredibly different from that movie. That movie starts with our characters dead and then quickly sees Eric rise from the dead and begin to exact revenge on the people who killed him and his wife. But this movie starts very differently. We begin with a greater focus on Shelly, portrayed by FKA twigs. She has a video she’s trying to protect and gets checked into rehab, where she meets Eric.
From here, it’s easy to appreciate what this movie tries to do. While the first film only features Eric and Shelly’s relationship through flashbacks, this movie wants to delve more into how these characters meet, what draws them together, and then break our hearts once they are eventually killed. It’s a good idea on paper, but the movie executes it very poorly. It’s strange to introduce us to these characters as two junkies escaping rehab together (very easily, I might add), especially after the original movie had Eric confront a woman for being on drugs rather than taking care of her daughter.
The Crow fails partially due to the lack of chemistry between Skarsgård and twigs. Their relationship doesn’t feel deep or textured because it feels too much like a casual fling. In the original, you could tell they had been together for a long time and were engaged to be married. This movie has the murder happen mere days after they first meet. It doesn’t feel very impactful. Each of their romantic scenes feels disposable, and it gets surprisingly dull after a while. Many movies have established a powerful love connection in far fewer scenes than this film, and this movie doesn’t even do that well.
Another issue is that this movie needlessly complicates the characters. The graphic novel and the first film were straightforward; the two lead characters were killed by bad people. The graphic novel has the villains do it for fun, while the movie added a little more motivation surrounding tenant eviction. The Crow (2024) decides to have the villains hunt down Shelly because she has a video with incriminating evidence, and we have Danny Huston as Vincent Roeg, a crime lord who can whisper into people’s ears and mind control them.
The execution of this idea is mildly hilarious, but the bottom line is this movie overcomplicates the villains and what they want and spends way too much time with them, even though they’re all forgettable. It’s also not as scary because it’s horrifying to imagine that an act of senseless violence can happen to you and your lover. It’s even more disturbing that it can happen randomly with no motivation. By giving Shelly a piece of evidence she’s protecting, the movie loses that randomness factor that made the attack such a nightmare. The fact that these characters are part of this larger cover-up does not work at all.
That original movie had such a quick pace. They’re dead by the start, and Eric returns as The Crow, exacting vengeance on everyone who wronged him. This movie takes ages to get to where we started in that first film. It would be a different story if the first hour and fifteen minutes were enjoyable, but they aren’t. You may roll your eyes at some dialogue, and you spend way too much time on good guys and bad guys you’re not invested in. We have clichéd scenes of post-mortem Shelly underwater with Eric trying to swim to her, and Eric meets someone in the afterlife that solely serves as an exposition machine. Eric goes back to talk to Mr. Exposition so many times that it’s hilarious.
Once Eric finally becomes the titular character of The Crow, gaining his superpowered abilities, it still does not feel like he is the character. The fun of the character is that he’s an unbeatable, unstoppable force that can kill anyone who did him wrong. But the film spends a lot of time with him figuring out his powers and he feels very vulnerable, despite being a character where the joy comes from watching how powerful he is.
The Crow limps its way toward its final act, and this is where everything changes. Much like the titular character, this dead-on-arrival movie comes roaring back to life with its final action set piece. We have a large-scale action sequence that takes place at an opera. This sequence is beyond incredible. It features astonishing gore and creative kills and effectively uses The Crow’s power to the best of its ability. The fight choreography is splendid, and watching this absolute slaughterhouse is a feast for the eyes.
The opera sequence in The Crow is almost worth the price of a ticket alone. It’s so spectacular that I would search for it to rewatch it in a few months. That’s how splendid this movie suddenly becomes. You’re left to wonder where this movie was hiding the whole time. If director Rupert Sanders had this in him, why didn’t we see this earlier? Where has this guy been all our lives? I kid you not; if the entire movie had been close to as fantastic as this opera sequence, I might have even liked it more than the 1994 movie. This is the only great scene in the film, and it’s so much better than everything else that it sticks out like a sore thumb.
As much as I loved this scene, The Crow takes too long to get there. By this point, it’s too little, too late, and the film fizzles out into its final moments, which also have a solid idea. I wish this movie were better than it is, but unfortunately, the pacing isn’t good, and a lot of it feels like a very disposable revenge movie. The atmosphere is not as potent as Proyas’s film, and all we’re left with is a cheap imitation of a classic ’90s actioner that would have been best left alone.
SCORE: 4/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 4 equates to “Poor.” The negatives outweigh the positive aspects making it a struggle to get through.
