Movie Review: THE CROW (2024)

This week I watched the 2024 reboot of The Crow starring Bill Skarsgard, FKA Twigs, and Danny Huston.

The story follows a girl named Shelly who lands in a rehab centre where she meets a tortured artist named Eric. Shelly is on the run from a crime lord named Vincent Roeg, who also happens to be an emissary of the devil. Roeg is after Shelley because she is in possession of an incriminating video of him. At the rehab centre Eric and Shelly become smitten with each other and quickly fall in love. When one of Roeg’s minions comes to the centre, Eric and Shelley escape and for a time they live in romantic bliss until Roeg’s men finally catch up with them and murder them both.

Eric wakes up in train yard purgatory, where a guy named Kronos lives with a bunch of crows. Kronos offers Eric the opportunity to be reunited with Shelly by killing Roeg. He agrees and is sent back to the real world with the inability to die. Eric begins his investigation into Roeg and discovers that not only does the video incriminate him, but Shelly as well. After momentarily doubting the woman he loves and getting killed for it, Eric offers Kronos his own soul in exchange for Shelly’s life. 

Returning to the land of the living once more, Eric goes through Roeg’s minions arcade style until he finally reaches the final boss and takes him out. His mission completed, Shelly is revived on the night of their murder while Eric returns to the train yard and waits for the day they will be reunited once more.

My Take:

I’ve been waiting for the reboot/remake of The Crow for what seems like forever. Most notably I recall a time when Jason Momoa was set to take on the role of Eric Draven, but alas that never came to pass. As someone with an affinity for movies with a gothic, supernatural feel along with some creative violence, the concept of The Crow has always appealed to me. I watched the original movie well after it came out, but I still loved it. I read the graphic novel shortly after and it became one of my favorites and probably opened the door to me expanding my comics reading outside of Marvel and DC.

So when it was announced early last year that this movie was finally in production I was psyched. When the trailer came out I actually thought it looked decent, but I’ve said the same thing about every trailer for each Sony Spider-Man adjacent movie that’s come out over the last few years and we all know how they turned out. When the reviews started to come out I decided to pass on seeing it in theatres and ultimately I ended up watching it on $0.99 rental on Apple TV. It was worth exactly that much. 

This movie takes a while to get going. Normally, I’m a fan of solid relationship building, but for a movie like this they spend way too much time building up the relationship between Shelly and Eric. It drags on for too long and even though I felt like Skarsgard and Twigs have great chemistry, the story doesn’t really do much to create any depth to their characters or their relationship. It basically amounts to the type of unrealistic, bohemian love affair that used to be reserved for alternative rock music videos in the early 2000s. Ultimately, I came to this movie for the revenge killing and I just wanted them to get on with it. 

I enjoyed Bill Skarsgard’s performance a lot more than I thought I would. His version of Eric Draven, lacks the cool factor that Brandon Lee’s had, but there’s an emotionality that he’s able to project through his big doe eyes that really makes you feel the character. He really has that Machine Gun Kelly, I’ve been traumatized to the max vibe working for him in this movie. It was kind of comical to me that despite the fact Skarsgard is absolutely shredded, Eric is kind of a clutz, a piss poor fighter for most of the movie, and never really feels like he’s physically up to the task he’s about to embark on. That being said when he finally dons the black leather jacket, and the signature Crow makeup, and shows up to the opera with a katana and really starts putting his inability to be killed to the test it makes for great entertainment.

Adding a supernatural element to the villain, Roeg, was an interesting choice. I felt like it kind of took away from the original idea of the crow, where it’s more about the tragedy of their love being torn apart that brings Eric back. This one is set up as more of a heaven vs. hell type of thing, but it’s not really even heaven? It’s a weird and unnecessary addition to the mythos I think. Roeg also just isn’t that interesting of a character.

This version of The Crow isn’t a great movie. BUT it also wasn’t the pile of flaming hot garbage that it was made out to be. It became pretty clear to me early on that this movie was never going to succeed in theatres. People just don’t watch movies like this anymore. This is the type of movie where back in the day you would watch when  you got to the theatre and realized the movie you wanted to see was full, but you were already there so you had to go see something. But that doesn’t happen now. People either go see the movie they want or they don’t go at all. It’s a shame and it’s the reason why movies like The Crow generally just go direct to streaming. The only thing I can think of for why the studio opted for a theatrical release is they felt it would be able to rely on the fanbase of a 30 year old movie and the source material being super-hero adjacent. Wrong on both counts. One thing I kept thinking about while watching this movie is that it really would have benefited from a better soundtrack. The aesthetic of it is so grunge/gothic and I think they really should have incorporated more Nu-Metal era music in this one. It feels like a movie that should have come out in the early to mid 2000s, maybe that’s why despite all of it’s faults I still kind of liked it.

Ultimately, I thought that once the movie really got going, basically at the point that Eric decides to offer his soul in exchange for Shelly’s, it was actually a lot of fun.