There are sacred cows, and then there’s The Crow. The original movie version of James O’Barr’s supernatural comic book series became a cult classic the instant it was released in 1994, and the love for it has only grown over the years.
It’s easy to see why. The movie, directed by Alex Proyas, had it all: a doomed love story at its heart, a timeless goth aesthetic that has inspired everyone from HIM’s Ville Valo to Ice Nine Kills’ Spencer Charnos, and a killer soundtrack that stands as one of the greatest the 90s had to offer. And then there was the heartbreaking death of star Brandon Lee as a result of a horrific on-set accident with a gun, instantly adding him to the pantheon of doomed big screen icons alongside James Dean and River Phoenix.
Such was the impact of the original version of The Crow that even a string of increasingly godawful sequels couldn’t tarnish its reputation. But now, director Rupert Sanders – of Snow White And The Huntsman and Ghost In The Shell fame – had decided to give it a go with new version of The Crow that’s being touted as a “reimagining of the original graphic novel” rather than a remake of the classic movie.
In the credit column, it had the chameleonic Bill Skarsgård – aka coulrophobics’ nightmare Pennywise from the fantastic two-part It remake – as strung-out anti-hero Eric Draven and acclaimed avant-pop singer FKA Twigs as his doomed girlfriend Shelly. In the debit column was, well, pretty much everything else.
The initial trailer was greeted with derision, with even original Crow director Alex Proyas wading in. “Eric Draven’s having a bad hair day,” he cattily said Skarsgård of Draven-as-Soundcloud rapper’s appearance. The fact that the movie’s original release date was pushed back countless times didn’t bode well, though that wasn’t as ominous as the fact that reviewers weren’t allowed to see the movie until it was released release – a classic Hollywood move for any studio wanting to bury a stinker.
But now the 2024 version of The Crow has hit the big screen and the reviews are in. Could it slice through the whiff of catastrophe and soar like a dead rock star in a leather trenchcoat? The simple answer? No.
The reviews for the new movie have been almost uniformly negative. Several places dished out damning one-star slatings. The Guardian held nothing back: “The Crow 2.0 is a total, head-in-hands disaster, incoherently plotted and sloppily made, destined to join the annals of the very worst and most pointless remakes ever made.” Empire was marginally less disparaging, writing that “the mood is sullen and slow, the action messy, and the look drab”, before adding that “it bungles even the most basic storytelling”
The pile-on continued elsewhere. The A.V. Club calls it “a film that seems to have once been nine films, all hastily cobbled into something resembling a story, all of its edges smoothed off until it’s flat, flimsy, and dull.” Vulture slammed the two leads, sneering that “Skarsgård and Twigs have a total absence of chemistry.” Mashable.com dispensed with the fluff and cut to the chase: “Repulsive and abysmal.”
It wasn’t all bad news. Esteemed trade publication Variety attempted to find some good in it, calling it a “slow but stylish remake”, giving it a comforting hug: “[it] is no slam dunk. But neither is it an unwatchable dud.” Rogerebert.com was even more charitable: “It's the kind of movie where, if you saw it when you were 14, you'd see it ten or twenty more times, and be inspired to check out books from the library, maybe memorize some poetry.” Which sounds like absolutely no 14-year-old we know.
Of course, the last word goes to Rotten Tomatoes, the website that crunches every review out there into one ringing endorsement. Or in this case, non-endorsement. Only 19 per cent of 58 reviews are positive, saddling The Crow remake with a honkingly bad average rating of 4.1/10. Brandon Lee can rest easy, it seems.
Far be it from us to revel in the misfortune of everyone involved in the movie, but this is what happens when you mess with a classic. If anyone’s thinking of remaking Airheads, we’ve got one piece of advice for you: just don’t.
