The Crow Review: Don’t Answer the Caw of This Lackluster Reboot

The Pitch: When moody artist Eric (Bill Skarsgård) meets the troubled yet sweet Shelly (FKA twigs) in rehab, he feels like he’s finally found someone who understands him… even if she doesn’t have quite as many tattoos as he does. Shelly’s in danger, though, due to her own dark secrets, and after they escape the rehab facility, that danger catches up with them — leading to their brutal deaths.

Death, however, is just the beginning for Eric, as his trip to the afterlife is halted by spirit figure Kronos (Sami Bouajila), who delivers the news that thanks to Eric’s pure love for Shelly, he can return to Earth to avenge her. Figuring out the particulars of being an unkillable undead avenger strongly associated with crows isn’t the easiest thing to do. But Eric’s clinging to the hope that by stopping the allegedly immortal/definitely evil businessman Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston) from taking any more souls, he might be able to save Shelly’s.

He’s Not a Regular Crow, He’s a Cool Crow: Before the press screening for Rupert Sanders’ “back to basics” reboot adaptation of The Crow began, I couldn’t stop staring at the key art displayed on the theater screen, which featured a semi-shirtless Bill Skarsgård with all of his tattoos on display. This included the scrawled phrase “Good Boy” with the word “Good” crossed out, right on his tum-tum — a style begging to be considered daring and edgy.

Unfortunately, that sort of, dare one say, twisted aesthetic became old news at least two Jokers ago, and is just one of the ways this new adaptation of James O’Barr’s famed comic books fails to click into gear. The plot largely consists of Roeg getting rid of his foes and potential witnesses by whispering them into suicidal acts, and on a visual level, Sanders feels like he’s copying and pasting from far too many recent influences. He does deliver some quality dark mayhem towards the end. But it’s a bit too late by that point.

A Different Eric and Shelly: Without getting too bogged down in comparisons to Alex Proyas’ 1994 original — a key touchstone for 1990s goth culture — the biggest difference between the two Crows is that this new iteration begins with its star-crossed lovers as strangers, allowing the audience to be a part of their love story from the beginning. There’s honestly something to appreciate about this approach, as it allows twigs and Skarsgård to build up some decent chemistry from the ground up, with a few sweet montages to establish the strength of their bond (even if it’s ultimately short-lived).

The downside of letting Eric and Shelly find each other in this way is that the fateful double-murder that serves as the plot’s inciting incident doesn’t occur until a good portion of the way into the film. This means that not only is this version of The Crow yet another origin story, but it’s an origin story where the hero doesn’t start getting his powers until at least thirty minutes into the movie, and doesn’t figure out how to use them properly until the final act.

In between, there’s a lot of brooding, with multiple scenes of Eric grappling awkwardly with his undead state while trying to figure out how Shelly’s past led to the both of them losing their future. (Were it not for their murders, would Eric and Shelly have found lasting happiness? Or would they have found themselves in couples counseling after a few years to work through their codependency issues? This is not a question the film troubles itself with.)

A Bloody Bright Spot: Perhaps the most disappointing thing about The Crow is that it ends just when things are getting good. After some initial fumbling about — because it turns out that being unkillable isn’t a huge advantage if you don’t actually know how to fight your way out of a paper bag — Eric eventually acquires his full undead Crow man powers, just in time to take on a horde of henchmen in the lobby of an opera theater.

It’s a sequence that honestly feels like a true reward for the patient viewer, the movie’s crowning glory: While not shy about blood or guts throughout (guts in fact make quite a literal appearance at one point), watching Eric tear through goons with focus and purpose becomes almost a gleeful experience here. There’s a very particular sort of laughter scenes like this inspire — laughter that maybe isn’t always that complimentary. But the visceral chaos delivered by that sequence, especially its conclusion, was legitimately fun to watch.

The Verdict: Bill Skarsgård isn’t the problem here, as he brings some game commitment to the screen, with Eric’s vulnerability and awkwardness humanizing him as much as his love for Shelly does. FKA twigs isn’t the problem here, as Shelly gets arguably more character development than Eric does, and holds her own on screen, especially as a relatively new actor. Even Danny Huston isn’t the problem here, though that’s mostly because his performance is muted as opposed to campy, meaning he barely makes an impression despite being, y’know, a classical music-loving immortal soul vampire.

The real problem, sadly, comes down to script and execution, along with a failure to tackle that one big question all reboots really ought to answer: Why this story, and why now? Why did we need a new take on The Crow, after all these years? Just having the rights to the IP isn’t a good enough reason. And yet sometimes, it feels like that’s the only reason a movie like this gets made.

Where to Watch: The Crow flies into theaters on Friday, August 23rd.

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