 |
| Images courtesy of Lionsgate |
James O'Barr's The Crow is a beautiful and tragic piece of art. A work that is an act of self-harm, each page slashing into the reader's emotions like a razor blade opening up a fresh cut on your inner arm. Early in his young adult life, O'Barr's fiancé was killed by a drunk driver, and in his pain and grief, he created the world of The Crow to deal with it, perhaps thinking if he poured his feelings onto the paper, they would stay there, trapped in the ink. It is a tale strictly about revenge and one in which the protagonist has no journey to speak of, just a mission to complete: death to all who murdered his love. Rupert Sanders is now the fifth director who has tried to capture the dark and anguished feel of the original comic. Although his film doesn't hit the rock bottom dreck levels like The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005), it doesn't do anything interesting or exciting with the material either.
We are again introduced to the star-crossed lovers Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs). Eric had a troubled childhood with an alcoholic mother, and that has influenced his young adult life; he has no purpose in life and wanders around the streets, getting into trouble. Shelly is similarly unmoored, drifting from sex work to hanging out with unsavory types, eventually catching the attention of a crime lord named Roeg (Danny Huston). To escape from his notice, Shelly hides out in a rehabilitation center, and while staying there, she meets Eric, with whom she has an instant connection.
One way that this iteration of The Crow differs from the previous films is the decision to have the romance play out in real-time rather than relegate it to flashbacks. On paper, this is an excellent idea because the theme of loss and revenge would hit all the harder if the audience is emotionally invested in the couple, but unfortunately, Skarsgård and FKA Twigs have zero chemistry with each other. It goes through the motions, with stilted and dull conversations swiftly transitioning to sweaty floor sex and a hillside picnic thrown in for good measure, but it never feels entirely like there is a connection between their characters. Neither one is fleshed out thoroughly, and there is a half-hearted attempt to paint Shelly as a musician, mirroring FKA Twigs' real-life career, but it's all surface-level. Ironically, even though they spend more screen time on the courtship than in previous films, it feels more shallow.
Eric and Shelly's demise is now pushed to the halfway point of the narrative, and the pacing drags quite a bit up to this point. Once Eric takes up the mantel of The Crow, it improves somewhat, kicking the film into a higher gear. Whenever Eric gets hurt, he feels the immense pain of his wounds, and he is in agony when his flesh stitches itself back together, leaving a ragged scar. In a way, it's an exploration of the body horror inherent in becoming the walking dead and the way that tragedy can scar the body as well as the soul. Overall, this adaptation is way more gory than any of the previous films and channels the visceral brutality of the comic. Skarsgård's performance lacks the depth and elegance needed to portray The Crow, and he comes off more like a nu-goth edgelord than a deeply tortured soul. Although there is a rousing action sequence set in an opera house in the third act, the point of this story has never been cool action scenes in a superhero sense; it is about the futility of revenge and that more violence will never bring back a dead loved one (a subtext that is completely ignored in this film to tack on a happier ending).
Roeg is ill-defined as a villain, and his motivations are never explained outside of an ambiguous supernatural demon connection. In the comic, one of the most heart-wrenching aspects is that there was no reason for Eric and Shelly's deaths; it was pure random chaos. This film tries to shoehorn an overly complicated side plot, which takes away from the singular theme of the narrative: revenge. Somehow, this film manages to do too much and not enough simultaneously, and it feels unfocused like there is missing connective tissue. Supposedly, The Crow takes place in Detroit, but there are no visual indicators that define the city, like the Art Deco buildings and the neo-classical and neo-gothic architecture. Detroit has the perfect aesthetic for a tale like this, and the city's character is not represented well; it's just a generic and bland urban setting.
While Sanders' vision for The Crow is serviceable and attempts to change up a few things, it needs more panache and artistic flair. It comes off as a mediocre attempt to reintroduce The Crow to a new generation but it lacks the soul of the original work that has endured over the past thirty-five years.
--Michelle Kisner