By Seth Lukas Hynes
The Crow
Starring Bill Skarsgard, FKA Twigs and Danny Huston
MA15+
3/5
Directed by Rupert Sanders, The Crow is a tepid and unnecessary reboot.
After he and his girlfriend Shelly (FKA Twigs) are murdered, Eric Draven (Bill Skarsgard) rises from the dead to seek vengeance.
The original The Crow from 1994 is dark and edgy but full of heart.
Eric (played by Brandon Lee, who tragically died from a prop firearm accident on-set) is an avenging angel of death, but also funny and compassionate; he will elaborately terrorise and kill his murderers, but stop to pet his cat, play a sick guitar solo, console a little girl or help her addict mother get her life back together.
Resembling Robocop as Gothic fantasy, the 1994 Crow is grungy and violent yet hopeful and even sweet, and the reboot lacks the original’s touching depth.
The original Crow’s episodic, efficient pacing establishes Eric’s lost love, life-ending trauma and quest for vengeance as he explores his new supernatural powers.
The reboot spends a long first act showing Eric and Shelly’s relationship, which exposes them as vain, uninteresting characters.
Danny Huston is blandly sinister as the villain Vincent Roeg, especially compared to the slimy charisma of Michael Wincott in the original.
The highlight is a very fun bloodsoaked showdown, with the fighting mirroring the acrobatics and intensity of a nearby opera, but the rest of the action, while showing more finesse than the original, leaves little impression.
The reboot spends too much time on the source of Eric’s powers, with a redundant second-act conflict about “pure love”, and builds to a rushed climax (with an insulting twist at the very end).
Playing in most Victorian cinemas, The Crow reboot is a shallow echo of the great 1994 original.
