A Look Back at The Crow (1994)

 

With the newest Crow moving coming out this Friday, it's time to look at the first movie.

The Crow is a gothic comic book movie based on James O'Barr's 1989 comic book series. It was produced by Entertainment Media Investment Corporation, Pressman Film, and Jeff Moss Productions and distributed by Dimension Films and Miramax. The Crow was written by David J. Schow and John Shirley and directed by Alex Proyas.

The story is, On Devil's Night, rock musician Eric Draven and his fiancé Shelly were brutally murdered by a violent gang. Now, one year later on the anniversary of their deaths Eric is resurrected as The Crow and he's seeking vengeance.

• Negatives

I've got nothing.

• Mix

Now let's be honest with ourselves, the vengeance story is very simple. BUT, But what saves the movie from being casted away like many other revenge movies is the more interesting aspects. Such as it's gothic look and the whole premise of The Crow. And as I've said many times before, as long as you have some sort of entertainment factor people will forgive your simplistic story, and despite some seriously dark subject matters, The Crow does have some great action sequences. There's also some lighter moments, primarily between Eric and Sarah (a little girl who Eric and Shelly took care of due to her mother being absent most of the time). So combine the action and other aspects you can easily forgive the story being simple.

• Positives

Let's move forward to the better parts of the movie, one being that gothic look. Proyas gave this movie a nicely dark look to it. The cinematography, the shots, everything about this movie's look is amazing. I also liked how there were sort of dashes of a noir film in this.

I also want to praise Graeme Revell's score. Some of you more than likely probably haven't heard of his work, but he has done a lot of high profile movies. Such as From Dusk Till Dawn, Bride of Chucky, Freddy vs. Jason, Sin City, Pineapple Express, and Vin Diesel's Riddick movies. Now with that out of the way, his score for this was great. What you'll really love about it is how it really elevates the movie's more emotional moments as well as it's darker moments.

Then we have the special effects. Sure I did notice a shot or two that might not have looked right, but the movie's effects are still nicely done. They may have been made back in the early 90's but a lot of them still hold up very well.

The last thing I'll give credit to is Brandon Lee's performance. Brandon Lee was astounding in this and definitely set a high bar for Bill Skarsgård to live up to in the upcoming movie. And after seeing his performance here it makes it all the more tragic that he was taken away from us so soon. Because the guy clearly still had so much to give.

The Crow is a great comic book movie and I strongly recommend you watch, whether you're a fan of comic book movies or not.

My final rating is, Great.

Okay that's all for today. Come back on Thursday, Aug 22nd, for part three of my Road to Superman (2025) with my review of Superman III. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.