Some films become cult classics by sheer virtue of existence; other films achieve that status through perseverance in fandom appreciation, retrospective re-examination, genre-assisted elevation, all generating an infamy in some way associated with the film… Alex Proyas’ The Crow, released in 1994, is a cult status classic as a result of all these things together. Thirty years later, Rupert Sanders’ reimagined remake may only be remembered or uttered in the same sentence as its progenitor as a reminder of what makes it so great – 2024’s Crow is not a cult classic waiting to happen. 2024’s Crow is just not a good film.
Eric Draven (Bill Skarsgård) is a severely tortured soul of a man who is residing in a prison-like rehabilitation facility when he meets Shelly (FKA twigs), another turbulent soul. Despite his shyness, Shelly engages and bonds with Eric and they form a firm friendship. An ominous visitation with shady characters that Shelly seems to fear confronting compels the pair to escape, going on the run together and turning their friendship into more. As the pair drift around, from Shelley’s old hideouts to chilled-out locals around their city – in love, recreationally high, and happy – Eric opens up and seems to allow himself to ‘really, really love’ Shelly. But when a heinous incident in Shelly’s life refuses to remain a secret, Shelly and Eric are both brutally murdered – suffocated to death and simultaneously forced to watch as the other sucks in their last breath. Only Eric awakens in a strange abandoned rail yard; a mysterious drifter residing there explains to Eric that sometimes, a death is so tragic and violent that the animal spirits responsible for the couriering of souls to the next life – crows – empower those who have been grievously wronged with great power and the ability to return to the mortal realm to exact vengeance. ‘The Crow’ has chosen Eric for that purpose for the chance to end the deviant ways of the man that had Eric and Shelly killed: Roeg (Danny Huston), a man who made a deal with Satan himself to send innocent souls to Hell so that he may live forever. Empowered with an unrelenting – and literal – voice of dark persuasion, Roeg sullies and condemns innocent people to damnation; Shelly had physical proof of this that risked Roeg’s criminal empire and immortality, hence her murder, and Eric’s. The drifter tells Eric that if he keeps the love he has for Shelly pure in his heart, the ‘power of the Crow’ will keep him alive and fighting and allow him to punish Roeg and his cohorts, and allow him and Shelly to return to life when the deed is done. Armed with his love, his anger, and the ability to survive mortal injury, Eric sets out to dole out vengeance as The Crow.
Right from the start, this film jettisons much of the comic book groundwork and origins from the James O’Barr books and re-imagines the mythology of the comic series in more ‘real world’ contexts; gone are the dystopian nicknames of gang members, and the psuedo-hellscape gothic city layouts of the series or the 1994 film, replaced by Huston’s opulently wealthy and devious crime lord and his nameless cronies, as well as real locations in both Prague and Bavaria. The mythology of ‘the Crow’ – even the abilities that come from becoming The Crow – are minimized and reduced to simply the survival of mortal wounds.
In fact, the biggest indicators of where the film is going to go – and where Sanders is interested in taking the film – is in exploring this kind of gothic supernatural love story first, and doing the heroics last…dead last. The first twenty-five minutes, where Eric and Shelly meet and fall in love… in sequence after laborious sequence that go on for far too long. Sanders wants to offer up a couple to audiences that they fall in love with, so that when their murders occur we are on their side – on Eric’s side – and feel the need for their being avenged. But the relationship – from wooden acting from both Twigs and (the usually reliable) Skarsgård to incredibly saccharine and weak dialogue – does not feel like anything more than music video prologue, all dressed up like we are about to see a love story for fans of The Cure or Nine Inch Nails. It is is all artifice with no heat or chemistry, mere images and not much else. As Sanders attempts to tease clues of tragedy and secrecy about Shelly’s past in these moments, the only thing that gets more obvious than FKA twig’s lack of acting chops is the fact that the story around her, Skarsgård, and the overall production has been purposefully changed and rearranged so much to not be a remake, that not only has the mythology of the series been essentially removed, but so have the human touches that make the comic book – and the original film – so engaging. This is barely The Crow, or much of anything really tangible as a story.
There is not enough ‘guyliner,’ Skarsgård muscle, bloody action, or emotional weight to make this cult favorite remake worth the effort to reanimate…
The result is a very slow and unbelievable love affair that leads to violent tragedy that carries no real weight – and all of this is a good forty minutes into a film that is supposed to be about brooding violent revenge, grungy gothic love, and a supernatural meditation on light and darkness. After his death and resurrection, it takes Eric another twenty minutes to truly realize his potential with this new gift, to enact a plan, and to execute it in an overwrought and awkwardly staged hand-to-hand fight – the only genuine action scene in the film – that lacks any of the pizzaz or physical showmanship of Brandon Lee’s Eric in the original. When you see the physical form Skarsgård is in for this film (literally walking from the set of Boy Kills World to The Crow), the total waste of his muscular and imposing frame – and his acting talent – hits hard. With his famously spaced eyes and mouth, that build and all of the ‘tattoos’ on display, Bill’s Eric could have – should have – been more than a one dimensional drifter with a nonsensical montage for a backstory…he could have been something like an edgy guitarist with a darker past…oh wait! That’s the original film! Pair this with insipid musical scoring that assumes it is gothic (and has some bizarre soundtrack reinforcement with the likes of Joy Division), lackluster camera work in some gorgeous buildings and locations, and editing that slows even tense moments of reactionary violence, the resulting film is just dead on arrival, simple as that.
Proyas’ original film achieved cult status for lots of reasons. Yes, it is hard to argue against the largest of them being the untimely accidental killing of its lead star on set during filming, as that kind of tragedy elevates any project to the height of legend; Brandon Lee is remembered almost solely for The Crow not only because it was his last film, but it was meant to be his breakout film. But the film is also one that unabashedly – for better or worse of most Nineties trends – was cheesy and slightly emotionally overcooked. B it also brought kinetic action that utilized its star’s physical talents, spoke a dark visual language that serviced the story – and romantic tragedy – and most importantly…understood and leaned into the source material in a way that was worthwhile for audiences. All of this genuine commitment to the material was influential on the comic book and sci-fi sub-genres in film for the better part of a decade – Batman Forever, The Matrix, and even X-Men all carry elements of honoring source material and getting earnestly moody by way of the original Crow, all of which affirms its cult status. Simply put, The Crow had an impact on cinema.
Sanders’ version works so hard to not be a remake of the original that it looses everything that is meant to be identified as The Crow in the process: story, characters, identity. What is put on the screen is a homogenized collection of guy liner closeups and faux-gothic angst parading as tragedy without much more than a pulse, which considering the awesome and terrible irony of its not-so-undead hero, truly is something that should be avenged.
Final Thought
Some films just should not be remade - sorry, reimagined. If you find yourself in a cinema this week, go see Deadpool & Wolverine for a proper comic book movie. Or anything else.