This is the ultimate case of “who is this for?”.
I saw this in a fairly packed cinema. Not full, but maybe half. This already had me surprised, as I just assumed this would be a disaster at the box office. The reaction of the audience to certain parts of this film was fascinating, so I’m glad that for whatever reason, 30 or so people decided to show up to this when I saw it.
The Crow feels like a film that is desperate to prove that it isn’t a remake - various AI bots on Twitter (AKA X The Everything App™️) will tell you that it’s a re-interpretation, not trying to be like the Proyas film, but a new adaptation of the comic. This film is so inaccurate to the source material that it isn’t even worth mentioning in terms of critiquing it. Which leaves us with something that is wanting to be seen as something completely new. Unfortunately, the completely new thing that has been created is not good.
The pitch for this has to have been something along the lines of “what if Riverdale crossed over with John Wick?”. The dialogue feels as though it was written by and for teenagers (this will be important in a second). ‘Edginess’ has always been essential to The Crow - it’s about a feeling of sorrow for a lost lover so strong that it can bring you back from the dead to get revenge. The dialogue between the two lovers, Eric and Shelley, is laughably bad. Stifled laughs and murmurs could be heard around the cinema after some of the more egregious offerings (the recurring “How many people have you loved? Really loved?” from Shelley got laughs every single time), which emphasises a fatal flaw in this interpretation of this story - the romance is completely unbelievable.
Sure, it’s definitely possible that two of the most insufferable people you could ever imagine meeting would fall in love this quickly, but there is absolutely no spark between the two. They have barely any time together before declaring that this is a real love, that neither of them had felt before. It would seem plausible and even cute to younger teens (again, this will be important - bare with me) but these are supposed to be fully grown adults, saying the most ridiculous, childish confessions to each other between sessions of sex and drugs. There is no dark romance, no indication that these two people were soul mates, just that they happened to be in the same place at the same time, and thought “why not”. You’d roll your eyes if you heard that it had really happened to someone, and you’d tell them to get a grip and grow up if it happened to someone you knew.
The most important mis-step that this film makes, that I’ve hinted at already (thanks for remembering), is that it cannot be for any particular audience. Of the people at the showing I was at, it was a fairly 50/50 split of older couples, and young women. I heard the older couple sat next to me saying that they hoped it wouldn’t be too scary, and the young women in the row in front of me were laughing to each other during the opening title sequence where we get long, gratuitous shots of Bill Skarsgård’s naked body. The older couple, as would become apparent, didn’t really know what the film was about. The young women, as would also become apparent, were here to see a hot shirtless guy do some action (I can’t blame them - he looks incredible). The moment I realised that this had been marketed terribly was when the second half of the film comes around, and he becomes The Crow. For whatever reason, this interpretation has gone for extreme violence and gore. Not something I have a problem with, Proyas’ original has a couple of squeamish moments. The audience was clearly not ready for this. The graphic depictions of injury caused both groups to wince. When we got to the penultimate confrontation, and The Crow slowly impales a sword through a thug’s eye, the women next to me left.
It’s obviously possible that they just thought this was bad, and decided enough was enough. I feel as though this was probably not what they expected, though. The young-adult style love story portrayed for the first half of the film, while totally shallow and dull, contrasts massively to the also dull but gratuitously violent second half of the film. The action itself is totally over the top, but still somehow boring. A showdown in an opera house is inter-cut with the opera on stage, implying that director Rupert Sanders thinks he’s doing something really interesting and clever, but in actuality you’re just boring the audience with two totally different art forms at the same time. Violence of this level, and a basic, ridiculous teenage love story appeals to one, very particular audience - teenagers. If I was 13 when I saw this, and I’d never seen the original (I’ve always been a horrible nerd so of course I had seen the original when I was 13 despite it being 20 years old at the time), I’d have loved it. It’s graphic, it’s moody, it makes attempts at being sexy, I’d feel as though this is what I would do for every short-lived teenage romance that I’d had. Which is where this film comes across a big problem.
In the UK, this film is rated as 18. This means under no circumstance, can anyone under the age of 18 be admitted to see this film. Not even with a parent or guardian, not at all. They have effectively shut out the only audience that would enjoy this film even slightly. This must be for the sex scenes and drug use - Deadpool and Wolverine is rated 15 and is almost as violent. An 18 rating is rare in the UK, with most films being given the 15 regardless of content. Sanders clearly thinks that the sex and drugs are important to the story, then, or else they’d be taken out to open this up to a wider audience. These scenes only seem to reinforce the ideology of the director, that this is serious because it has serious, adult topics in it. No one over the age of 18 is going to find this story anything other than laughable and embarrassing.
The special effects are for the most part good, some CGI crows look a bit ropey at times and the ‘afterlife’ location never feels even slightly real. Practical effects for the blood and gore works well - a few of the scenes where Eric is forcing his insides back, well, inside, are masterfully done, one scene involving his abdomen in particular got the loudest reaction that wasn’t a laugh in my showing. These effects feel rather wasted, then, in a film that has what I can only assume would be career ending performances from both Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs, if anyone was going to actually see this film. They should consider themselves lucky that most people won’t. Other than the complete lack of chemistry, which is obviously an absolute necessity in this film given the subject matter, both deliver their lines with such little conviction that it almost feels as though this is the first time they’d ever even read them, let alone performed them. Twigs in particular gives a true “worst of the year” contender of a performance, although this is probably due to her having more to say than Skarsgård, who is equally terrible whenever his character actually does say anything.
Overall, The Crow is a mess. A teen drama that can’t be seen by teens, or an action gore-fest that requires the audience to sit through the worst episode of Riverdale for the first 50 minutes. Laughably bad performances from both main stars, and worse writing than you can genuinely even imagine - it has to be seen to be believed. Lionsgate has somehow provided us with the worst film of the year so far, not even three weeks after it already provided us with the previous worst film of the year, Borderlands. You will get a few laughs out of the delivery of the atrocious script, but there is nothing else here. Victims, aren’t we all.
