The Crow (2024) Review

 

The Crow (2024) is a gothic comic book movie, serving as a reboot to The Crow film series, the fifth overall movie, and the second adaptation of the 1989 comic book series after the 1994 film. It's produced by Hassell Free Productions, Davis-Films, The Electric Shadow Company, Pressman Films, Ashland Hill Media Finance, and Media Capital Technologies and 30West and distributed by Lionsgate. The Crow (2024) is written by Zach Baylin and William Schneider and directed by Rupert Sanders.

The story is, demons from Shelly's past have come to haunt her. Because of this dark past resurfacing, Eric and her are murdered. Now, wanting revenge for the love of his life being killed, Eric rises from the dead and plans to everyone who was responsible.

Initial Reaction

Unlike a lot of people, I don't dread remakes, reboots, reimaginings, whatever they're called. I won't overhype them, but I'll give them a fair chance. So when I heard a new Crow movie was coming, I was curious but I was also skeptical.

Cons

I've got nothing.

Middle Ground

One of two big gray areas stems from the pacing. While there are parts were the pacing is nicely done, the majority of it is very slow. The movie's only an hour and fifty one minutes long, yet it felt like an extra twenty or thirty minutes was attached to it. Then there's the characters. Eric and Shelly are given a love story from how they meant to their deaths, and while some moments are kind of sweet, for the most part it's all surface level stuff. But I think the worst character writing came from the villains. They're very generic and because of that they're gonna be very forgettable. Even if you weren't fans of the villains from the '94 flick, at least they had distinguishable personalities. I can't say that for these ones.

Pros

Now there are a few things the movie has going for it. One of those being it's look. The cinematography is great. It perfectly captures the movie's dark tone. Then there's the special effects. While some things were a bit iffy, nine times out of ten, the CGI is really good. The overall best thing about this version of The Crow is Bill Skarsgård's performance. While the material isn't very strong, Skarsgård manages to given a really intense performance and I loved what he did throughout the movie.

While I do believe the 1994 Brandon Lee movie is a far more superior movie, I don't consider this a bad movie. Yes, it's without a doubt flawed, but there are far worse Crow movies out there. Looking at City of Angels.

My final rating is, Okay.

That's all for now. Come back on Thursday, Aug 29th, for part seven of Looking Back at the Films of 2023. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.