Review Roundup: Rupert Sanders’ The Crow

Thirty years, three sequels and one short-lived TV series later (we won’t dwell on those, except to say The Crow: Wicked Prayer is actually pretty good), and we finally have a new The Crow on the big screen. And while it makes sense that a different filmmaker would have a different take on the material, what’s surprising about Rupert Sanders’ interpretation is that it’s emotionally ineffectual. This new remake takes the simplest story in the world and makes its plot and the mythology weirdly complicated, to the point that it all becomes total nonsense.

Not even mutating into Death Wish in pancake makeup, however, can salvage what feels like a flailing attempt to reintroduce a cult character from a cult comic/movie into today’s all-superhero-all-the-time entertainment landscape. It doesn’t take long to realize that what was meant to be a franchise-starter is, unlike its hero, permanently DOA.

In the interest of introducing its themes of death, loss and grief, the new version of The Crow opens with a flashback to its hero Eric as a child, vainly attempting to save a horse from mortal wounds. For an unnecessary remake like this one, following a trio of underachieving sequels to the 1994 original, a dead horse may not be the best image to lead off with.

In the end, 2024’s The Crow is only an echo of an echo of the original, sometimes literally repeating the 1994 film’s best lines, but in a new context that makes them more cringe than compelling. Sanders didn’t even manage to create a soundtrack that scratches at the distinctiveness or greatness of the original. Ugly, incoherent, and ultimately cynical, The Crow evokes the words of wisdom from another horror movie about resurrected corpses on a rampage: Sometimes dead is better.

The Crow is most notable for excessively straining for R-rated credibility at every turn, such that a climactic rampage in an opera house lobby vainly strives for grandeur by crosscutting between the stage performance and the Crow’s mayhem, the latter of which involves gruesome decapitations, beheadings, and other assorted out-of-this-world nastiness perpetrated with guns and a samurai sword. Director Sanders aims to make this over-the-top violence thrilling, but it plays as both sadistic and dull — a losing combination that sums up the entirety of these proceedings.

The Crow wants to update the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, but in a lot of ways it’s bound by the IP it’s adapting. What starts as a compelling love story ends up choked by a gory, gruesome tale of revenge: there are glimmers of brilliance here and there, but there’s not always room for the dark to mingle with the light.

Despite being trapped in production hell for over a decade (and the elongated saga of this film’s making has been covered ad nauseum for years), The Crow feels like a rush job, an idea that wasn’t fully understood before the cameras began rolling. The concept is never made wholly clear, and the rules of the universe are oblique. This is especially aggravating, seeing as Sanders’ film is the fifth feature to be based on O’Barr’s comic.

Lugubriously, flaccidly directed, overlong and overindulgent, bizarrely waiting until the 40-minute-mark to introduce the reanimated title character, this iteration of The Crow will be remembered — if it’s remembered at all — as one part object lesson and one part cautionary tale in the perils, risks, and problems associated with the adaptation process.

Look, deep thoughts and deeply held emotions aren’t for everyone, and there’s something blissfully empty-headed about the scene in which Shelly, posing with a book at an Instagram-ready picnic with some random friends, informs Eric that she’s reading Rimbaud. If only The Crow were a little more self-aware, it could be a cult classic in its own right — though probably not the kind its makers were hoping for.