Film Review - The Crow
Images courtesy of Roadshow Films.
For the last decade or so, Hollywood has tried and failed to get a new adaptation of the James O’Barr graphic novel The Crow off the ground, going through many different production groups and lead actors including the likes of Bradley Cooper and Jason Momoa. Now finally, just a couple months after the 30th anniversary of Alex Proyas’ 1994 cult classic adaptation, we’re treated to a new reimagining of the story from director Rupert Sanders and writers Will Schneider and Zach Baylin.
The story of The Crow in all versions follows Eric Draven, after he and the love of his life Shelley Webster are gunned down by a group of criminals, as his restless soul is brought back from the dead through the power of the crow in order to put things right. And putting things right, of course, means to murder the criminals that killed him and Shelley.
Any new adaptation of a popular story is inevitably going to invite comparisons to previous adaptations so let’s get that out of the way. The 1994 film is edgy and angsty but also has a level of fun about it. The cheesiness of the time period has only made it age better over the last 30 years. Brandon Lee, who infamously died on set of the film, delivered a charismatic performance that marries the angst of his character’s lust for revenge with a tenderness for the other characters he will be leaving behind. Speaking of, the supporting cast of the original film is full of memorable characters, both aiding and standing in the way of Eric’s journey. The emotion of the ‘94 film is raw but nuanced, the exceptional production design is gothic, yet simultaneously feels pulled straight out of a comic book (akin to Sin City 11 years later). It has an artists’ touch about it.
Why spend a paragraph talking about a 30 year old film? To serve as a baseline for how the newest version of the story fails in almost every department the original succeeds in. I haven’t read the original comic so I can’t attest to the accuracy to the source material, so this is purely a dissection from a filmic perspective.
First thing any observant audience member will notice is just how dark and gloomy this film is. It might not be constantly drenched in rain like in 1994, but the tone is just grim. It has no levity, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it feels purely one-note. This tone is also carried into the performances. Bill Skarsgård is a great actor, but he’s only given two emotions to convey as the lead of the film, Eric Draven; he’s mopey throughout almost the entire runtime, with occasional splashes of violent anger. As the love-interest Shelley Webster, FKA Twigs is actually given a lot more screentime than Sofia Shinas had. She's the deuteragonist here, in fact she’s the POV character for about the first half of the film. But much like Skarsgård, she’s given very little to do during her performance other than be scared and provide brief moments of romance for Eric. One of the most notable inclusions in this film is a whole half-hour prologue detailing Eric and Shelley’s romance before their inevitable deaths. This is a sweet act in theory, but in execution is excruciatingly slow and filled with cringe-inducing Tumblr-edgy dialogue that would make 2016 Joker and Harley Quinn avert their eyes.
Not only are the scenes with Eric and Shelley hard to sit through, the scenes without them aren’t much better. Gone are the memorable supporting characters of 1994; the quirky criminal underworld full of endearingly wacky thugs with stupid names, the police officer with a personal stake in Eric’s pain, the skateboarding pre-teen and her drug-addled mother, even the hard-boiled detective with two lines is more memorable than any character in this film. We’re instead treated to generic thugs, generic drug-addicts, generic evil henchmen, and of course the generic rich immortal villain played way-too-seriously by Danny Huston, whose mere presence elevates this from a simple and effective fantasy-revenge story to a larger-than-life epic about an “ancient evil that needs to be vanquished to restore balance to the universe” or something to that effect.
This film follows the formula set by many superhero origin stories almost beat-for-beat, in the most unimaginative ways, while also committing the sin so many modern movies follow in giving us way too much unnecessary backstory and exposition. Eric can’t simply begin the film as the undead hero with his powers as we follow his journey to get revenge, instead we have to follow his life beforehand, see him learn how to use his powers, and watch him confused and weak till he finally grows into his final form. It’s all so tedious,even complete with a generic mentor-type character that lives in the - admittedly cool-looking - world between life and death, whose sole purpose is to deliver all the exposition directly to Eric (and the audience’s) faces. This movie is only 10 minutes longer than the original but is so bloated with empty scenes of angsty dialogue and Bill Skarsgård making one of two faces, it feels twice as long.
Even the soundtrack is replaced from pulse-pounding industrial music to wimpy emo indie-rock. There’s a whole soundcloud rapper aesthetic to so much of this and yet they couldn’t score it with some interesting hip-hop music? Hell, the best part of the marketing was the use of Post Malone and Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Take What You Want’ and it’s not even in the movie.
But enough complaining. The film is very visually pretty, especially in showing off the night-time cityscape, plus there’s some cool production design in the purgatory-analogue dimension. The only real saving grace this film has to offer are the genuinely exciting action set-pieces that can even give the 1994 fight scenes a run for their money. While it’s disappointing there are only two of them, one set in a car and the other set in the foyer of an Opera, they’re still really well put together. There’s some really creative fight choreography that fully utilises Eric’s immortality by letting him stab and shoot the bad-guys through himself, like Deadpool taken to the extreme, with both red and black blood caking the walls. The Opera fight is a particular highlight, and would probably be a really memorable fight scene for years to come were it not attached to such an abysmal film.
Rupert Sanders shows a good eye for action, and given a good script - preferably something original rather than yet another tired modernised re-adaptation of a beloved property,this being now his third after 2012’s Snow White and The Huntsman and 2017’s Ghost in the Shell) - I think he could deliver something pretty good someday.
The best part of the screening was the little black cupcakes that were handed out outside the cinema afterwards, almost like a little treat for slugging through the disappointment that was this movie.
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The Crow is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.