With its legendary cult status, modernising The Crow is no easy feat. Instead, The Crow (2024) by director Rupert Sanders wisely avoids treading on the 90s film, instead honing in on creating a more comic-book-accurate on-screen depiction of the titular character.
Bill Skarsgård‘s portrayal of Eric/the Crow continues to highlight his uncanny ability to play the unsettling yet somehow endearing archetype that encapsulates the dark avenger in a way that doesn’t encroach on the late Brendan Lee’s take on the anti-hero.
The first 45 minutes or so of The Crow (2024) focuses on building up Eric and Shelly’s (FKA Twigs) relationship, something that the original movie largely glosses over. The two meet in a drug rehabilitation clinic that, for all accounts, looks way more akin to a prison than a rehab centre. The oppressing feeling of the clinic seeps into Eric’s psyche as the movie gives audiences glimpses of his traumatic past, one revolving around drugs and death.
Eric finds himself drawn to Shelly, eventually helping her escape the facility from the persecution of dark forces from her own past. A few lovey-dovey montages later, the two are madly in love. Cue her death, and Skarsgård’s transformation into the Crow has begun in earnest.
Like any pulpy, comic-book origin story, the next couple of scenes in The Crow (2024) feature Eric coming to grips with his new, grim reality, eventually fully awakening to his dark mantle as the immortal anti-hero. The Crow (2024) is at its best in these fleeting moments of ultra-violence.
Both the creative ways in which Eric meets his untimely end, only to slowly and painfully heal, coupled with some of the fight scenes that make up the back half of The Crow (2024), create some genuinely entertaining scenes that take advantage of its R rating, similar to movies like Deadpool & Wolverine, while still maintaining a good sense of grit that doesn’t constantly diffuse the tension through humour.
“The Crow (2024) by director Rupert Sanders wisely avoids treading on the 90s film, instead honing in on creating a more comic-book-accurate on-screen depiction of the titular character.”
Unfortunately, it’s everything else that suffers in The Crow (2024). Not to say that the movie is terrible, but unlike the comic or original feature film, the reboot movie doesn’t seem to have its own identity.
Sure, some of the scenes in which Skarsgård’s character is in limbo, or the in-between place between life and death, meeting up with Kronos (Sami Bouajila), an otherworldy spirit guide, in addition to some of the fight scenes, feature fantastical set pieces and visuals, but ultimately are too sparingly used, making the movie feel too grounded, which instead of adding to the serious tone the movie wants to achieve, comes off as feeling clinical and generic.
Even the short intro animation in The Crow (2024) feels more akin to a Netflix series title sequence featuring surreal blood-covered shots of Eric that feel like it belongs on a serialized TV program rather than a silver screen debut. Finally, although this latest adaptation of James O’Barr’s work is more faithful to the comic, more time could have been better utilized to further flesh out the mythos of the titular Crow, his powers and the connection to the supernatural.
Similarly, as someone who isn’t invested in the comics, more time to focus on the movie’s antagonist, Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), who admittedly is portrayed as being an enigmatic character, still comes off as feeling half-baked, with many questions surrounding his powers and background left in the air for those who are less intimate to the source material to contend with.
Additionally, despite a solid performance for all cast members involved in the project, The Crow (2024) closely follows Eric, who, in this rendition of the comic-based story, is seldom seen interacting with anyone after donning his dark mantle unless a gun or dagger is involved, making dialogue or character relationships in the latter half of the movie, feel more like an afterthought.
At the end of the night, The Crow (2024) isn’t the worst movie of the year, and if you’re a fan of the comic series or are a fan of Bill Skarsgård, you’ll likely walk out of The Crow with a big grin on your face. For everyone else, however, the latest adaptation of the dark anti-hero kind of just feels like another R-rated take on the oversaturated superhero genre that plagues modern movie theatres everywhere.
