The Crow
Directed by Rupert Sanders
Written by Zach Baylin and William Schneider
Starring Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, and Danny Huston
Runtime 111 minutes
MPAA Rating Rated R for gore, drug use, language, sexuality, nudity, strong, bloody violence
Now playing in theaters

by Kate Beach, Staff Writer

Since its debut as a comic book series in 1989, James O’Barr’s The Crow has spawned five films, a short lived Canadian TV series, and a number of novels. Though new comics have continued to be published, the franchise on film has been dormant since 2005’s forgettable The Crow: Wicked Prayer, which featured an extremely of-its-era cast including Edward Furlong, Tara Reid, David Boreanaz and, believe it not, Macy Gray. After nearly twenty years, it’s not a stretch to believe that the story of Eric Draven is due for a reboot. It might be, but not like this.

In this new telling of the origin story, Bill Skarsgård and FKA twigs take on the roles of doomed lovers Eric and Shelly. They’re not as disastrously romantic as Louis and Lestat or as symbiotically batshit as the Joker and Harley Quinn. They’re just sort of goofy and aimless, victims of vague traumas, and almost entirely free of chemistry, sexual or otherwise. They meet in a rehab facility that looks like the office building from Severance, and a few frames later, they’re in love. While it’s true that this is more backstory than the original film provided, it doesn’t really feel like it. Eric and Shelly of 1994’s The Crow had a community and people who cared when they were violently murdered. Eric and Shelly in 2024 have tenuous connections to friends, but nothing truly anchoring that lets them feel like real people. It’s a change that makes the characters feel thin and untethered, even if we technically learn more about them in this adaptation.

A complete lack of energy plagues The Crow from its bizarre opening scene. Every actor is sleepwalking through this film. FKA twigs has a beautiful, haunting face that fits perfectly in a gothic romance. She’s given nothing to do with it but try to look either scared or sad. Danny Huston is always fun, but he’s playing a character who is only vaguely defined as rich and bad, surrounded by equally bland henchmen. It feels like the movie wants its big bad to be some kind of class and wealth commentary, but it’s not nearly clever enough to complete the thought.

The tragic death of Brandon Lee on the set of the original film hangs over every subsequent entry in the series. Every actor to take on the role of Eric Draven is held up against Lee’s charismatic performance, and it’s not really fair. But The Crow that exists in most hearts and minds is Lee, and it would be a challenge for anyone to take on a role that’s so inextricably linked to his untimely passing. Unfortunately, it’s a challenge that Bill Skarsgård isn’t quite up for. He slouches and sulks through his pre-Crowening scenes, before becoming such a clueless undead avenger that he needs the rules explained to him multiple times. He lacks Lee’s charm, his passion, and even the sense that Eric Draven was a good person at the most basic level. In Skarsgård’s hands, he’s just some sad boy with one specific task and the personal style of Lil Peep or Machine Gun Kelly.

This confused look extends to the production design itself; everything feels flat and lifeless. Eric learns about his Crow powers and the various rules of the afterlife in a muddy railyard purgatory, and bodies float through watery afterlife liminal spaces that look like rejected Billie Eilish video treatments. The city isn’t devoid of color in a way that recalls a black and white comic, it’s just dank and bland instead of rich and textured. A bloodsoaked third act sequence almost brings some liveliness and actual fun, but it’s far too late for it to be effective.

The Crow, reimagined for 2024, sets out to fix problems that didn’t exist. It tries to give its lead characters tragic backstories to make the audience care, rather than establish them as compelling people in the present who are visited by unimaginable tragedy. It tries to update the look and feel, but it doesn’t bother to go deeper than what it assumes millennial or Gen Z goth-adjacents are wearing. It tries to be serious and intellectual, tossing out references to Hemingway and Rimbaud. It tries and it tries and it tries, and it just gets stuck in its own mud.