The Crow (2024)
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 "When someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes something so bad happens that the soul cannot rest until you put the wrong things right. And that is this movie."
— Eric Draven upon seeing this film | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Crow is a 2024 American gothic superhero film directed by Rupert Sanders from a screenplay by Zach Baylin and William Schneider. A reboot of The Crow film series, it is the fifth film in the franchise, and is the second film, after the 1994 film, to directly adapt the 1989 comic book series by James O'Barr. The film stars Bill Skarsgård as Eric / The Crow, a man who is resurrected to avenge the deaths of himself and his girlfriend, played by FKA Twigs.
Plot
Soulmates Eric Draven and Shelly Webster are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Draven returns to seek bloody revenge against the killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.
Why It Should've Died
- To start things off, it deviates heavily from the source material. Only Eric and Shelly appear while every other character has been removed.
- Bill Skarsgård gives out a mediocre performance as Eric Draven and feels like a cheap imitation of said character, which is such a shame since he did a phenomenal job portraying the titular character (also known as Pennywise) in the It movies. To be fair, it's a tough act to follow from Brandon Lee.
- Sluggish pacing that makes it feel like it's longer than its 111-minute runtime, as an already familiar narrative of this movie takes forever to develop.
- Atrocious direction from Rupert Sanders, who also directed the 2017 Ghost in the Shell movie, which is already a red flag.
- Inconsistent tone balance. This film tried too hard to be deep and emotional, but it felt more empty if anything because everything is too dark and dreary in an attempt to be "edgy".
- In a similar but worse case than Mario Strikers: Battle League, the grittiness of the original film has been completely toned down here. And instead, said grittiness has been replaced with a glossy, sanitized, generic action flick look. The emotional core that gave The Crow its beating heart is replaced with hollow revenge plot points. Instead of an eerie, gothic ambiance, this film is left with a by-the-numbers blockbuster aesthetic that fails to evoke any genuine feeling.
- The characters are boring, complete with a villain with demonic powers that encourages its victims to kill.
- Plot-Hole: Eric and Shelly can easily escape the rehab center without any guards watching and are even wearing trackers that could easily be removed. And no one bothers to contact the police after they break out.
- Much like Surf's Up 2: WaveMania of the Surf's Up series, Space Jam: A New Legacy of the Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies franchise, The Exorcist: Believer of the Exorcist franchise, and Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate of the Megamind franchise, it was too late to make another The Crow movie as the previous Crow film came out over 19 years ago, and it was because of this reason that people stopped waiting for another film, so this film should have been released sooner.
- However, unlike Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Top Gun: Maverick, Bill & Ted Face The Music, Bad Boys for Life alongside Ride or Die, Toy Story 3 alongside the 4th movie, Candyman (2021), Finding Dory, The Godfather Part III (especially it's recut film The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone) Rocky Balboa, the Creed films, The Color of Money, Incredibles 2, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Rescuers Down Under, Blade Runner 2049, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle alongside Jumanji: The Next Level, Zombieland: Double Tap, Scream (2022) alongside Scream VI, Evil Dead Rise, Saw X, Ghostbusters: Afterlife alongside Frozen Empire, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, Avatar: The Way of Water, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, and Twisters, all of which are far better movies, it doesn't even follow any of the techniques that made it a worthy decades late franchise revival in the first place, and only exists to nostalgia-bait fans of the original The Crow movie.
- Sequel bait ending: Eric dies, but Shelly is revived and they vow to find each other again. Can you tell that the rest of the franchise would never happen given the results? It also doesn't help that even Bill Skarsgård didn't want a sequel bait ending.
Qualities That Never Die
- The cinematography is nothing short of incredible throughout the film, especially with the gore scenes.
- The action scenes are great. The crew definitely went for a John Wick style flick, and you can tell by the amount of stunts that they really had fun with what they are doing.
- The soundtrack is incredible, especially the end credits.
- Say what you will about this movie, but it's nice to see The Crow back in the limelight 19 years after the previous entry, although that definitely won't make up for this film's flaws.
Videos
Reception
The Crow received negative reviews from critics, who panned it as incoherent and cheap and a truly ugly thing to endure. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 21% of 70 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.3/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 30 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.
A very negative review by Benjamin Lee, for The Guardian, wrote: "It was no real surprise that a tortured update of 1994's cursed goth revenge thriller The Crow would be a misfire – it's been in development since 2008 with multiple directors and actors attached ever since – but it's genuinely startling just how utterly wretched the finished product is and how unfit it is for a wide release." Alison Willmore, of Vulture, was very critical of the overall production and commented upon the acting as follows: "Skarsgård and Twigs have a total absence of chemistry, and while she's adequate in what's still basically a dead-wife role, he's shockingly inert for someone with a career built almost entirely on characters at the intersection of creepy and hottie." Other very negative reviews were published in Screen Daily and Mashable.
In a more mixed review, CGMagazine wrote: "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."
A very mixed review in The Ringer concluded: "And while the Crow reboot, like any film, ought to be viewed with an open mind, it's hard not to feel like the franchise should have ended with the original film's send-off.
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