The Crow

His name is Eric. 

He's not The Crow, but he might as well be on the basis of "sure, why not?" 

Whatever his name is, James O'Barr's undead comic book superhero is back to haunt movie theaters. When Alex Proyas adapted The Crow in 1994, he created a film defined by its gothic aesthetics and, unfortunately, the on-set death of star Brandon Lee in a mishap with a prop gun. This new film spent years in development hell, cycling in directors and stars before Rupert Sanders and Bill Skarsgard swooped in. Was it worth it?

Eric (Skarsgard) is a tortured soul living a quiet life at rehab. A new resident, Shelly (FKA Twigs), catches his eye, and the feelings are mutual. Shelly has incriminating evidence against the literally demonic crime lord Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston). She and Eric escape rehab when Roeg and his goons come looking for her. The goons eventually find her and kill them both.

As Shelly sinks below an otherworldly river, Eric finds himself at an otherworldly trainyard. Kronos (Sami Bouajila) assigns him to find Roeg, who is centuries past his expiration date, and kill him and his goons. Eric takes up his undead quest for vengeance with the help of a ghostly crow. Roeg soon decides to extract Eric's secret of immortality. Eventually.

The screenplay by Zach Baylin & William Schneider takes quite a while before it gets to Eric & Shelly's murders, and quite longer before Eric commits to his superhero look. In the meantime, we get plenty of time to see Eric & Shelly bond together through music. Eric also has flashbacks to a horse he failed to save from a barbed wire fence. The film treats the horse like Poe's Lenore, but we learn practically nothing about it. Roeg has the ability to compel people to murder or suicide, an ability which he uses in his first scene. That's about the most interesting thing about this villain. His compelling voice also plays into Shelly's dark secret, which makes it a bit time consuming when it tests Eric's love for her. Overall, the film has a thin plot stretched over 111 minutes, and I thought going in it would be longer.

Was there anything that worked? Eric and Shelly are quite likable, both together and apart, and it's perfectly horrifying when Roeg's goons find them. Eric spends most of his quest as an immortal punching bag for Roeg's goons, albeit one that shoots back. It's still satisfying when he cuts through them at an Opera House. That scene is a decent showcase for Meyerbeer's Robert Le Diable, and not, as I thought, one of many operas based on the myth of Orpheus. Marian (Laura Birn), Roeg's right-hand woman, gets a decent pity moment before Eric gets to her, even if it's too little, too late. Shelly's friends, Zadie (Isabella Wei) and Dorm (Sebastian Orozco), may have limited screentime, but they are still pitiable. 

What really helps the film is its technicals, particularly Steve Annis's cinematography and the production design. It's nothing less than stunning when we see a massive murder of crows swarming around that ghostly trainyard. There's also some great location filming in the Prague and Munich. There's some great makeup work for Eric's evolving looks and a decent score by Volker Bertelmann. Their work is much more memorable than the story, for sure.

Was it a bad idea to remake The Crow? Not necessarily, for its central premise has always been pretty compelling. It is a bad idea, however, to make this new film this slow. It's still quite stunning in places, and its big Opera fight scene is almost worth sitting through it all. Maybe Eric's next cinematic life will be as successful as his first. Until then, I got to fly off and find the source of my next review. Expect one before the month is out.