Released in 1994, Alex Proyas’ The Crow became a cult hit more for the macabre mystique that surrounded it — its star, Brandon Lee, was tragically killed during production — than for its quality. Immensely stylish, but otherwise mediocre, it’s not surprising it was eyed for a remake. Its brooding, simple story of vengeance has loads of potential. This new version has, disappointingly, ported over all the mediocrity — and added more of its own — but precious little style.
In development for over 15 years, The Crow’s producers have described this not as a remake, but rather another take on James O’Barr’s 1980s comic. It’s neither, really. It borrows a kernel of O’Barr’s idea, and the goth trappings and high-contrast look of Proyas’ film, and jumbles them together with its own poorly explained mythology.
Bungles even the most basic storytelling.
In O’Barr’s telling, the Crow is created after a young couple, Eric and Shelly, are murdered by street thugs. Eric is resurrected by a crow and, consumed by grief and fury, seeks bloody justice. Here, we still get Eric and Shelly, played by Bill Skarsgård and FKA twigs, but they’re wrapped up in some sort of demonic plot with Vincent (Danny Huston), who has to keep claiming innocent souls to satisfy, we must assume, Satan. We must assume, because The Crow gives little reason as to why anything’s happening.
It bungles even the most basic storytelling. We’re introduced to Eric in a pre-credits sequence showing his childhood despair over a horse dying. This is all the explanation we’re ever offered as to why he, as an adult, is in rehab and emotionally broken. He’s brought instantly back to life when Shelly, who is on the run from Vincent’s evil minions because she has a video that could “destroy him” (she never attempts to), joins him in rehab. She’s attracted to Eric because he seems “brilliantly broken”, a line twigs delivers with the lightness of a kid saying they like your unicorn pencil case. They break out of rehab and fall deeply, montage-ily in love.
This love, formed over several days, and in rehab, is, we’re told, so pure that when a horrible fate befalls Eric and Shelly, Eric is offered the chance of immortality to wreak revenge on their killers. The rules of and reason for his special treatment are, again, ill-defined.
Rupert Sanders (Snow White And The Huntsman, Ghost In The Shell) has never shown himself to be a great storyteller, but he’s usually good for a bit of visual oomph and occasional humour. But here the mood is sullen and slow, the action messy, and the look drab. It’s only in the last 25 minutes, when Eric goes ‘full Crow’, that Sanders seems to be having any fun with it. Eric fussing over the right amount of eyeliner for his new identity is probably more camp than Sanders intended, but all the better for it. And while a massacre in an opera house is derivative — Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation meets John Wick — it’s cheap, gory fun. It’s not much, but after 70 minutes of tedium it’s welcome, a meagre bit of sustenance to peck off this rotting carrion.
