'The Crow' Struggles to Take Flight with Meandering, Exposition Heavy Script [Review]

..​Alex Proyas’ The Crow (1994) is one of those seminal films that managed to tap into an angry and frustrated youth yearning for a hero that they could relate to. It defined a generation, in part thanks to Proyas’ stunning portrayal of a gothic city on fire, as well as a haunting performance from Brandon Lee, who tragically died on set as the result of a terrible accident. With director Rupert Sanders’ The Crow (remake, reboot, whatever you’d like to call it), comparisons to the original were always going to be inevitable. To the filmmaker’s credit, and unlike the sequels that followed the 1994 film, Sanders doesn’t try to recreate Proyas’ vision, but instead instills his own. Different as it is, the latest version of The Crow unfortunately also happens to be a dull bird with a broken wing, incapable of soaring even close to the heights set by its predecessor.
 
Based on the graphic novel by James O’Barr and this time adapted for the screen by Zach Bayling and William Josef Schneider, we meet Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs), who escape together from an institution and hole up in a city apartment belonging to a friend of Shelly’s. Over a short time, the two fall madly in love, but when Shelly’s dark past catches up with her, all of that is shattered in an instant, leaving both dead…until Eric rises from the grave, gifted the power of the crows to seek bloody vengeance.
 
The Crow films have always tended to focus on a pair of murdered lovers where one returns to avenge them. That’s not new. What is new is how Sanders’ entry approaches that relationship. Whereas previous storylines tend to open on the murders having already been committed, this Crow spends a good amount of time developing the intimacy between Eric and Shelly before ripping them apart. On one hand, I understand the decision and the intent to build these characters so that their deaths hit harder. Skarsgård puts in a solid performance and FKA Twigs is...okay? Enjoyable as it should be to watch the bond between them grow, the drawn-out plotting makes for a meandering story that inches along like an earthworm...not to mention a romance that would have betting friends say "I give it a few weeks". Needless to say, what the other Crow films accomplish in five minutes, Sanders’ movie takes roughly half the runtime to get to and still somehow manages to lack emotional depth.

The film’s dragging feet is an example of the greater issue pecking at this Crow. It doesn’t trust its audience. Once Eric and Shelly are murdered by her former employer and classical music enthusiast, Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), who has the power to speak into someone’s ear and make them do terrible things—it’s as silly as it sounds—things really start to become frustrating. Eric arrives in the afterlife somewhere between Heaven and Hell, where he meets Wickham (David Bowles), who could also be referred to as Mr. Exposition. Again and again, the film grinds to a halt to bring Eric back to this place, and again and again, Wickham explains the obvious, as if the audience are a bunch of goldfish incapable of putting two and two together. Just as the film doesn’t believe viewers would buy into the lover’s relationship if it developed off-screen, it doesn’t trust that they’ll understand a thing if not fed to them as easily digestible mush like baby birds. Teens don’t like being talked down to, a vital notion that the 1994 Crow understood and which this entry woefully does not consider.
 
Whereas Proyas’ Crow set trends, Sanders’ version feels like a desperate attempt to follow them and appeal to a youth group it doesn’t understand. What made the 1994 film so effective was the emotional angst it captured amongst those who didn’t feel seen. This Crow misinterprets that and instead assumes displaying characters with tattoos is enough. As for the violence, Sanders’ presents it with a slick John Wick sort of mimicry that goes heavy on the gore in what seems to be an attempt to be "edgy". To be fair, there are some wonderfully bloody highlights, made more gruesome by an emphasis on the fact that Skarsgård’s Crow heals quickly yet still feels an intense amount of pain. But clean visuals and fun bloodshed—most of which doesn’t arrive until too late in the third act—isn’t enough to make up for a film that's unsure of the audience it wants to reach or how. None of this is to mention an ending that misses the point entirely. 
 
Characters without much personality. Woeful pacing. A script that doesn’t understand its audience. There’s a whole lot weighing this Crow down. And that pains me to say, because I admire Sanders’ own appreciation of the original’s legacy. He doesn’t try to repeat what Proyas did before, and his decision to ban real guns from set in respect of what happened to Brandon Lee deserves applause. Unfortunately, none of that translates to what is ultimately a bland Crow film that I don’t see raising this franchise from the dead for very long.

The Crow is now in theaters. 

By Matt Konopka