Lionsgate has been careful not to label the latest incarnation of The Crow as a remake or a reboot, although since it revives a dormant film franchise, it certainly qualifies as a second one. It is not a remake, in fact, although the script this time takes even more liberties with the source material of J. O’Barr’s original comics than the 1994 film adaptation. This film is etched in the collective memory largely because Brandon Lee died in an accident on set during filming. His career breakthrough became a monument that would have been poetically morbid even without the stamp of real-life tragedy.
Comparisons driven by sentimental favoritism are rarely flattering, so it’s understandable that the studio wanted to avoid them as much as possible. It was already an uphill battle for a long-in-the-making project that went through numerous directors, writers and stars over the past decade before arriving at this finished product, with some loyal fans and early critics sharpening their knives for the death blow. But if you’re able to put previous “Crows” out of your mind, “Snow White and the Huntsman” director Rupert Sanders’ film works to a considerable extent in its own way – as a dreamy fantasy thriller that’s gory yet oddly inviting.
It’s slower than most popcorn entertainment these days, and has less of a superheroic, pop-gothic or martial-artist tone than viewers might expect from earlier films. The contrastingly elegant yet offbeat revenge-slash-love story of this reboot isn’t a sure-fire success. But it’s also not an unbearable letdown.
O’Barr conceived the comic book series (first published in 1989) to express grief and anger after the death of his fiancée in a collision with a drunk driver. In both the graphic novel and Alex Proyas’ hit film, the villains are urban criminal underclassmen, caricatured louts who stand somewhere between “Dick Tracy” and a sequel to “Death Wish.” Here, however, the script by Zach Baylin and William Schneider makes the villains twisted rich evildoers who are too well connected to face the consequences of their crimes, not unlike the concurrent opening of “Blink Twice.”
In an unnamed town, Shelly (British pop star FKA Twigs) is an aspiring singer who is unwisely drawn to the hedonistic scene funded by shady tycoon Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), who is always on the lookout for new talent. At his parties, good people seem to be forced to do bad things. When her friends Zadie (Isabella Wei) and Dom (Sebastian Orozsco) record evidence of such acts, they are quickly discovered, putting everyone in danger. Roeg is not to be trifled with – he has literally sold his soul to the devil, gaining a long life and a luxurious lifestyle in exchange for sending the souls of depraved “innocents” you-know-where. “Go to hell so I don’t have to,” he tells the hapless Zadie.
On the run from his henchmen (played primarily by Laura Birn, David Bowles and Karel Dobry), Shelly manages to get arrested and arranges for the police to send her to a fanciful state rehab facility. There she meets Eric (Bill Skarsgard), a lanky, anxious loner who she begins to like—and why not? With his mullet, countless tattoos and sweetly sarcastic manner, the often shirtless Eric is like Pete Davidson with a world-class personal trainer. Both supposed outsiders come across as nice, attractive partygoers whose abundance of cool clothes and available sleeping arrangements is explained by no discernible income or backstory. Their loose connection deepens when it turns out that even the rehab penitentiary isn’t safe from Roeg & Co.
The two escape, their chemistry developing during a fairly long montage of falling in love – this Crow takes its time getting to the revenge part, unlike previous installments in the series where happy moments were relegated to flashbacks. But villainy eventually catches up with the couple, and they are killed. Eric then wakes up in a limbo in an industrial landscape, where a being named Kronos (Sami Bouajila) tells him he is dead… with one caveat.
Some souls, he is told, are guided to the afterlife by a crow. Others, too burdened with their unfinished business, are carried back to the mortal world by their bird. As long as he is protected by the purity of his grieving love, Eric can recover (albeit painfully) from any punishment Rogue’s enforcers inflict upon him. He spends the second half of the film fatally working his way up that chain of command, culminating in an elaborate, splashy confrontation between a man and a private army, intercut with an opera performance. (The opera house must be incredibly soundproof, as patrons are oblivious to the incessant gunfire just outside the auditorium.) This sequence recalls the pivotal bullet ballets in Coppola’s The Cotton Club and The Godfather Part III, and achieves something of their confident bravado.
It’s a good scenario, and a little later there’s a decent send-off for Roeg, whose nickname is surely an inside joke among cinephiles. Elsewhere, Sanders’ “Crow” can lack urgency, but he doesn’t seem to be aiming for it. Nor does it have any real emotional depth, despite the new conceit that Eric thinks he can somehow bring Shelly back from the underworld, like Orpheus and Eurydice. Instead, the film has a kind of confused, floating quality that only occasionally feels sluggish.
The comics’ macabre severity and the artful claustrophobia of the first film give way to a sleek, airier look brought about by DP Steve Annis’ widescreen compositions, well-chosen locations in Prague and Germany, production design by Robin Brown (who has cited Tarkovsky’s Stalker as an inspiration), and Kurt and Bart’s playful costumes. The special effects are restrained, aside from the ever-present crow.
Where Proyas’ vision of the grunge era was intended to disparage MTV, the style and mood here is of a very different, slightly more elevated character. Even if the violence is very hard R, there is hardly any sense of garish pulp fun. It’s satisfying enough, but has a semi-detached feel – not unlike the soundtrack selection, which tends toward slightly incongruous ’80s tunes from Joy Division, Gary Numan and the like rather than the full-on, headbanging rawk to which Brandon Lee performed his acrobatics. The performances are effective in a way that is fairly restrained given the thin characterization, and avoids overly broad brushstrokes.
There will likely be little demand for more where this film came from, or even for Skarsgard to reprise the role. Still, his and Sanders’ take on the guyliner — a signature hero look that actually comes late — is at least the best “Crow” film released since the other one. Of course, the sequels in between were terrible. But the 2024 “reimagining” has enough personality and panache to be convincing…at least if you’re not glued to the rearview mirror.
