‘The Crow’ movie review: Bill Skarsgård, FKA Twigs sink into this blunder of epic proportions

A still from ‘The Crow’

Note the missing trigger warning Blink twice? well, the crow There is a trigger warning, but it is incorrect. the crow A warning should have come for flat characters sharing toe-curling dialogues and zero chemistry. Based on James O’Barr’s comic book series and Alex Pryce’s fantastic 1994 film, this unnecessary reboot directed by Rupert Sanders (he directed Foundation Pilot!) moves at a pace that accumulates glue in a deserted post office.

the crowThe fifth film in the franchise, opens with a dead horse (black mark for animal cruelty). The horse gets caught in the barbed wire and a little boy tries to free it. traumatized son Erik (Bill Skarsgård) grows up struggling with addiction; Meanwhile a pianist, Shelly (FKA Twigs) is also struggling with addiction. When her friend Jadie (Isabella Wei) sends her a video, Shelly flees Rogue (Danny Huston), an art patron and crime lord who has made a deal with the devil.

Shelley is sent to rehab by the cops where she meets Eric and when Marian (Laura Byrne), Rog’s right-hand person, lands in rehab, the two escape. They hang out at Shelley’s friend’s ritzy apartment and fall in love while partying the night away… until Roeg’s henchmen find the two and kill them. Eric wakes up in an abandoned train station and meets Kronos (Sami Boyazila) who tells him that he is in a pure-style halfway house and that as long as his love is pure, he is invincible. Once he dispatches the villains, he can be reunited with his one true love. And so begins the snail-paced rampage of revenge.

A still from ‘The Crow’

The production design is excellent. The soundscape is trippy, if not compared to the 1994 movie featuring Stone Temple Pilots, The Cure and Nine Inch Nails. But that’s really what this glacially-paced movie is all about. The operatic violence at the climax – in case anyone misses the point, it’s intercut with an opera – is absurd.

Twiggs and Skarsgård have no chemistry, making it impossible to invest in their romance. The ages have no sense of lasting love and seem to be hanging out with each other for convenience rather than anything else. The lead dialogues don’t help either. The slow pace and haphazard plot, with the all-important video popping up as a filler, can’t move things forward.

The raven, also associated with ancestors and reincarnation in Hindu mythology, seemed to be stuck as an afterthought, vaguely floating in the frame, along with Shelley’s mother Sophia (Josette Simon) and an unnamed pianist as one of many meaningless characters. The only part of its proceedings is to wink at Roeg. There was a moment during a chase scene when the resurrected Eric took a Gothic Terminator to the head. It was, alas, quickly revealed to be a mirage in this desert of fantasy.

The Crow is currently playing in theaters