Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

The Crow (2024) is as a gothic superhero film (love that for them) which is also a reboot of the cult classic film franchise that was released between 1994 and 2005. The Crow (2024) was written by Zach Baylin and William Schneider, and directed by Rupert Sanders.

Starring Bill Skarsgård as Eric and FKA Twigs as Shelley, the movie follows these troubled souls as they find each other in the midst of chaos and danger. When the doomed lovers are murdered by the supernatural forces that operate in the shadows, Eric is given the ability to return to our world and set the wrong things right and save Shelly from a fate worse than death.

This is a dark and broody, urban fantasy, adjacent to the vampiric epidemic that swept cinemas in the noughties, confidently led by Kate Beckinsale as Selene in the Underworld franchise. The question is whether audiences are ready for a resurrection in this gothic subgenre of cinema.

The Crow had an easy-to-follow plot. Eric and Shelly meet in the midst of their individual traumas and carve out a space in themselves for love. Then it is all ripped away and Eric embarks on a journey where he embraces the dark side in order to save his love, but, there is one thing about the structure that didn’t work and one fundamental element missing from the plot.

With the structure, the set-up went on for too long. Meeting Shelly and Eric and watching their romance blossom belonged in act one, but it drifted into the act two, which is where the real story began. Watching Eric become The Crow ended up feeling like a midpoint turn in the film, giving us two very different movie experiences and left the heart of the story; Eric’s quest, feeling rushed.

The second thing that wasn’t hammered home were the motives of the antagonist Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston) beyond the obvious. Yes, we understand that he’s made a deal with (presumably) the devil to live forever, but his motives for going after Shelly felt like small potatoes compared to the power and infrastructure he’d amassed. Roeg tried to prune a bouquet with a chainsaw and the balance never sat right.

Which is a great segue into the characterisation in this movie, and the first thing that needs to be said is that if the next generation asks, we’ll tell them The Crow is the true story of how Nara and Lucky Blue Smith met. The chemistry and obsession between Eric and Shelly was so off the charts that I genuinely believed Skazzy would die for Twigs. Their tragic teen emo romance is what gave this movie substance to the very end.

That being said, one can’t shy away from the acting being sub-par and the character development being relatively non-existent. It didn’t matter so much with Shelly’s character, but with Eric we had vague backstory and a quiet man whose aesthetic (the tattoos and the wardrobe) were at odds with his personality. When Eric became The Crow, it was hard to see how that transition changed anything other than his wardrobe.

The wardrobe, the make-up, and the mise-en-scène of the movie against an inky shadow crawling night worked perfectly. It was so easy to believe in this dark gothic fantasy as all the background elements pulling it together worked seamlessly.

The cinematography had its stand out moments too, mostly during the scenes in ‘limbo’ where Eric is given his mission from the tropey wizard character and eventually chooses to become The Crow. One technical element that I was surprised didn’t leave much of a mark was the music, which could have heightened the world building of the film.

I don’t believe The Crow did its best to push the dark supernatural element of this story to be on par with the expectations of the urban fantasy genre. There were a lot of assumptions that the audience had to make about Roeg and his network and even Eric’s origins, and it wouldn’t have hurt the movie to step away from ambiguity and be more direct – especially for those of us coming into the universe of The Crow for the first time.

The aesthetics do most of the heavily lifting in this film, and honestly? Ignoring how shallow the movie was and focusing on the visuals and Halloween being around the corner, this is enough to intrigue me into going back and watching the original movie franchise, and researching the 1989 comic book that this universe is based on.

The Crow is an origin story, although having recently rewatched Sami Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002) I can say Eric’s path to being a superhero or anti-hero is definitely the path less travelled and reason enough to check out Rupert Sander’s franchise reboot. The movie didn’t leave a clear opening for a sequel, but I, for one, am ready to accept a return to this gothic landscape with Bill Skarsgård’s avenging crow at the helm.