Last Updated on August 30, 2024 by
The Crow is a 2024 Horror Movie Directed by Rupert Sanders. The film stars Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, and Danny Huston, with a runtime of 1h 51m, and was released on August 23, 2024.
In Hollywood, as in comics, the dead are always waiting to be resurrected and, thus, it is not surprising to see The Crow rise from the ashes 30 decades after it served to set the aesthetics of the goth 90s with the charismatic star, Brandon Lee, who was killed on the set of the movie. Like its predecessor, Rupert Sanders’ reboot, which is set for August 23 release, is about an innocent man who is killed together with his beloved and is then resurrected as an angel of death, who must hunt down his killers.
In contrast, despite sharing its title and source material with that version, this redux attempt is a poor imitation of a movie that carved out a uniquely dark and brooding identity for itself under the direction of Alex Proyas based on James O’Barr’s comic book series, particularly in this do-over, the tattooed gothic anti-hero vigilante in a trench coat and rain boots who roams a Matrix-infused rainy pseudo-Gotham is aLike that failed superhero show’s CM, Crow is one of the ‘overcompensating’ characters where the tattoos which include ‘Lullaby’ above the eyebrow, and tragedy/comedy masks with ‘Cry Now, Cry Later’ on his hands make him look like an extra effort to make him look as grim and gloomy as possible.
What marks The Crow most is its embarrassingly juvenile attempts at R-rated sensationalism seen in a climax staged in an opera house lobby where the Cross’s violent antics of shooting, stabbing, and slitting the throats are cross-cut with the opera on stage. Director Sanders tries to turn this sort of over-the-top violence into fun but the result is sadistic and boring – this is as good a summation of the entire experience as any.
In this nameless city, Shelly (FKA Twigs) must flee for her life after she receives a threatening video from her friend Zadie (Isabella Wei). The content of this clip isn’t revealed until midway through The Crow, and it turns out to be intensely underwhelming. Still, it nonetheless earns Zadie a spot in Hell courtesy of Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), a businessman who causes the young woman to kill herself by speaking in her ear in unholy tongues. Vincent has sold his soul to the devil to gain immortality, and his pact is to supply the devil with the souls of innocent people for the underworld. This is an exhausting job done with the help of minions accompanied by Marian, and it is interrupted only by the moments when Vincent is gushing over a young concert pianist he is taking care of because… why not? To avoid Vincent’s henchmen, Shelly gets arrested and taken to a rehabilitation center that is almost like a prison.
There, she gets to know Eric (Skarsgård) who is a recovering addict, a shy, lonely boy, and not very gifted when it comes to talking. Love slowly blooms between the pair, and when Marian comes to retrieve Shelly—to Quelle’s surprise, she is assisted by Shelly’s mama who has been bought and paid for by someone else for reasons never made clear Eric assists Marian in her endeavor by helping her escape. While in hiding, they move into an apartment owned by Shelly’s friend and they have sex, and please themselves by dressing and doing drugs. However, after being chased by dangerous killers, the two still manage to have a romantic picnic with some unknown people at the lake because, as scripted by Zach Baylin and William Schneider, everything in The Crow is incoherent.
Shockingly, Sanders’ film pursues chemistry between its leads without any of it, and therefore the entire first third of the movie is a desperate and motionless endeavor. The action starts as soon as the couple is killed, or rather transformed, with Eric waking in a grim, post-apocalyptic part of purgatory reminiscent of a broken-down train station supported by scaffold-like structures. In this way station, he comes across Kronos (Sami Bouajila) who tells him that Eric’s love was so big that it could not be taken by crows to the afterlife. Instead, he has been allowed to come back to the land of mortals to avenge people who killed him—and if he does this and in the process, Shelly’s purity remains intact, he will be reborn with Shelly.
This, theoretically, should be quite beneficial for Eric, but there is no satisfaction in his subsequent murder, which starts ineptly and stalls after he discovers the secret behind the videotape, that had sparked this story in the first place. Therefore, a new bargain is made where Eric is given yet another chance to go after the thugs to avenge Jules’ death in return for Shelly’s spot in Hades—a move that appears to be inconsistent and arbitrary for the hereafter rules that the movie has conjured up. Finally, once Eric has his full Crow powers, the film ceases to mess around and gets right down to the business of killing. However, Sanders’s pieces are overdone rather than creative; the most that he comes up with is an Eric and a car encounter, involving machine guns and! pistols and what have you, and the sequence is over too soon.
The Crow isn’t just dull; it’s cheesy too, thanks to some contrived moments of narrative, substandard use of CGI at some parts, and Skarsgård’s overly pretentious ‘body art’ – an eye in the chest, prose on his back. In one of the last scenes, Eric Zombie uses black make-up to draw straight lines, covering the corners of his eyes and mouth, which in perspective produces a fake “smile” that can hardly be called Monk-like because of its excessive similarity to the Joker from Batman.
Even for Skarsgård, there is little he can do to offset this daftness; the absence of any real chemistry with Twigs, who can only be considered a passable screen presence at best, extinguishes the flickering embers of failed passion. Picking up where so many other, fresher properties have left off, The Crow quickly makes room for another adventure featuring Eric, but all those elements are just the final move in the long list of hackneyed ideas that range from the film’s seedy electronics-infused soundtrack and pedestrian attempts to explain Eric’s post-traumatic stress disorder through confusing and arbitrary flashbacks. Huston tries his damnedest to bring some much-needed passion to this otherwise tedious and largely pathetic movie as an aristocratic megalomaniac obsessed with immortality.
Finally, however, he is helpless to prevent the clichéd visuals and second-rate posing of this redo, which enjoys one redeeming value, no matter how feeble the climax – being sufficiently bad to preclude sequels.
The Crow 2024 Parents Guide Age Rating
The Crow is rated R by the Motion Picture Rating (MPA) for strong bloody violence, gore, language, sexuality/nudity, and drug use.
Violence & Gore: A large amount of violence is depicted and sometimes in rather gory details in the movie. People are gunned down, and knifed, and a character even has his throat cut. One of the main violent scenes is associated with the beating in an opera house lobby and it is intercut with scenes of the opera that give rather grim effects. The depiction of violence may sometimes be perceived as brutal and especially provocative. Critics also pointed out that, the movie contains many scenes of violence, and its last part is especially the most violent, so, some people may feel it is violent enough. There are such examples as one of the scenes depicting the change of the main character in a postapocalyptic, purgatory, which is rather shocking in terms of the visual.
Sexual Content: The main characters are shown having sex in the bedroom while being chased by law enforcement, which refers to the sex scenes. The scenes are probably going to be rather suggestive and partial nudity, and sexually oriented scenes will be featured. The characters are also seen doing drugs together and the act is combined with sex, which raises the issue of adult content.
Profanity: The movie’s feel includes high intensity of the use of vulgar language, including the f-word and other abusive language. This language is used in several situations, for example, when the person gets angry or when he or she is emotional.
Substance Use: Characters engage in the use of drugs for fun. This entails some scenarios where certain persons are depicted engaging in certain sexual activities while using some types of drugs, making such behavior seem alright for some sorts of people. For example, one of the main characters, Eric, is depicted as a recovering addict, and there are hints of his substance use disorder throughout the movie.
All in all, The Crow (2024) features intense and heavy-rated aspects, such as gory scenes, sex scenes, vulgar language, substance use, and supernaturalism. I do not think it is suitable for children or young teenagers, and some of the scenes may cause distress to some of the elders. Again, parents should consider whether such a movie is fit for their children to watch.
