The Crow Parent Guide

Eric (Bill Skarsgard) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) have only been dating for a few days, but it’s been an intense relationship. After meeting in a court-ordered in-patient rehab facility and then breaking out together, they’ve been hiding out all over town. Shelly is being chased by some particularly unpleasant people for reasons she doesn’t want to talk about, but Eric infers that if they catch up with her, they’ll almost certainly kill her. What he doesn’t know is that they’re working for an almost impossibly evil crime boss, Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), who wants to eliminate Shelly as a witness to something dreadful. The happy couple manage to avoid their pursuers for a while, but soon both Eric and Shelly are found and killed.

Eric regains consciousness in a strange, overgrown, and seemingly abandoned afterlife, populated by a massive murder of crows and Kronos (Sami Bouajila), a spirit guide who explains what’s happening. Eric is dead, but he has another chance: If he can go back and kill Roeg, then he can save Shelly. Eric will be effectively impossible to kill, but he will still feel pain. So Eric plans to spread the pain around.

Based on a comic book series from the late ‘80s, this is not the first adaptation for The Crow. The last one, released in 1994 and starring Brendan Lee, is a cult classic, so this film version faces an uphill climb. There’s nothing worse than a hard act to follow, and this latest film struggles to keep up in a lot of areas.

The Crow version 2024 isn’t dreadful, if you like a brutal, gruesome, revenge flick. The violence is suitably visceral and extra bloody, the film is mostly well shot, and the leads are both strangely charming in a deeply unhinged kind of way. Parents considering this for family movie night might want to give it a miss, since the violence is topped up with frequent drug use and near constant profanity, presented with a sprinkling of sex scenes for garnish.

The real problem is that the film is a little too slick and not nearly weird enough. Now, I may be biased since I’m a fan of the ’94 movie, but this year’s version just doesn’t have the gritty, grimy, Gothic-fever-dream vibe that keeps the original film popping up at cinemas. I saw it in a theater as recently as this year. Our latest corvid-themed killing spree is still a wild ride. It just doesn’t have that bizarre x-factor that, in my opinion, is such a critical element in the staying power for the 30-year-old classic.