Stone the Crows

One thing you can say about The Crow is that is that it has delivered on expectations. They are remaking that crap 90's action film The Crow? Sounds like a bad idea. It's been in development hell for over a decade? It's definitely going to be bad. The Snow White and the Huntsman guy is directing it? His films are quite bad. The trailers out? It looks bad. Film is here? Yeh it's bad.

To call the film a remake is a actually a little unfair, it's really a new adaptation of the graphic novel source material (which sucks to begin with) and directer Rupert Sanders has tried to make the film something more than its 1994 counterpart, he just fails at a very fundamental level.

This is still the story of Eric, brought back from the dead to kill those who offed him and his girl but this time we lean more into the romance side of the tale, with his rampage motivated by the idea of saving his loves soul rather than just seeking vengeance. The problem is that there is a complete lack of any actual romance. We see Eric (Bill Skarsgard) first meet Shelly (FKA Twigs) in rehab and follow them over the few days they know each other before they are murdered. If you think that isn't long enough for true love to take root don't worry, she really loves him because he is "beautifully broken" and he really loves her because he once saw something bad happen to a horse. That's it for the great romance and they are soon killed because Shelly has an incriminating video of bad guy Danny Huston using occult whisperings to make people commit murder (apparently this causes the person soul to be sent to hell despite the fact they weren't in control of themself). Upon Erics death, some guy at a derelict train track decides that the whinny drug addict is the perfect guy to resurrect and send after Hutson.

Whatever you say about the 1994 film, it was dripping in gothic style and has a unique visual identity. This film dispenses with all that in favour of a grimy realism that is just boring to look at. The action is similarly uninspired with some of the blandest fight sequences of the year. Eric isn't supposed to be a master martial artist or anything but the fact he can't die is never used in any interesting way. It's a waste of Skarsgard, who showed in Boy Kills World earlier this year that he has proper action chops. He also has the perfect look for the role but is left floundering with a character that does nothing to endear them to the audience and the kind of dialogue an edgy thirteen year old would scribble in a notepad. It's odd that after so many years of trying to get a reboot off the ground the studio would settle on this nonentity as the version to press ahead with. Everything here is so uninspired it feels like they eventually ran out of patience and decided to just rip the band-aid off.

Aside from a couple of fun dismemberments there really is no entertainment value here unless you are the one in a hundred person the toxic teen romance angle actually connects with. The Crow isn't the most terribly made film you'll see, it's just a big empty vat of zero inspiration and that might be worse. Maybe next time, instead of a crow carrying the souls of the dead to the afterlife it should be a turkey.

4 parties in your apartment even though you know people are trying to kill you out of 10.

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