This article containsspoilers for both versions of The Crow.
The Crow(1994) is one of those seminal touchstones thathelp define a generation.
And sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.
The movie thus unfolds its central tenet with the simplicity of a fairytale.
Conceptually, this movie is very muchThe Crow Beginsin the Christopher Nolan sense.
Hes even got sad, emo-boy tattoos.
However, even their deaths figure much more predominantly in the overall plot.
It is fairly black and white.
However, he used his sinister power to also urge Shelly to murder a friend for murky reasons.
She is eventually captured and swiftly murdered, along with Eric, by way of bags covering their faces.
We then witness the afterlife, or at least a limbo nether-region in it, from Erics point-of-view.
Its also haphazardly handled in what seems like a brutal post-production process.
And the story is poorer for it.
Proyas aforementioned fairytale quality is derived from a heightened Gothic sensibility that borders on surrealism.
The Crow(2024) is a strange amalgamation of influences and styles that never blend.
But these intermittent flourishes exist in isolation and passing.
Overall, the film becomes a prosaic and ugly action movie with the functionality of a dozenJohn Wickclones.
Yet even that comparison is unfair.
It is just extremely gory.
But this just betrays how tacky the movie is.
Its surface level ugliness, but at least there it is effective.
But the comparisons still leave the reinvention wanting.
This is not to say that the love story fully works unto itself.
But the chemistry between Skarsgard and FKA Twigs is genuine, and you enjoy seeing these two people happy.
After she dies, he is simply the grieving boyfriend in a bad haircut.
Only in the third act, does he get to reinterpret what Lee did.
This occurs after he makes a deal with the humanized Crow spirit.
But as is accurately called out by the films screenplay, there is an overriding anger and despair there.
Skarsgards Crow is, eventually, a solidly played riff on the revengers tragedy at its most generic.
Which brings us back to Lee.
The past life of Lees Eric is a lot less defined.
However, Lee nor Proyas ever frame this Crows tragedy as deriving from a quest for revenge.
The tragedy is entirely informed by the loss Eric experienced.
His quest for vengeance is nothing less than just or righteous.
Daryl Albrecht (Ernie Hudson).
He also can relish living again.
What little we know about him before death is that he was a rockstar.
He even quotes Edgar Allan Poe while speaking of his spirit crow.
Even though hes dead, there is still a passion for life.
It is something that really cannot be duplicated.
Nor should you even try.
In their own way, the filmmakers ofThe Crow2024 recognized that impossible task and attempted to evade it.
But in which case, is the new movie evenThe Crow?
We would argue not, which makes its existence all the more mystifying.
