“THE CROW”
I don’t even know why I’m bothering. This movie was awful, and I hated it. Sorry, that’s not very useful criticism, so I’ll get down to the nitty gritty. This is a remake of The Crow from 1994, which starred the late Brandon Lee. Personally, I really quite liked that film.
This film is directed by Rupert Sanders, and if you don’t remember him, he directed the not very good Ghost in the Shell movie and the Snow White and The Huntsman film, which I didn’t really like either.
This film follows a very similar plot to the original, you have Eric (played by Bill Skarsgard) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) who, after a romance, are killed by a gang lead by Danny Houston. Eric vows his revenge, and thus becomes The Crow to seek it out.
If anyone’s wondering, was this film made to stick close to the comic? The answer is absolutely not- it strays even further from the comic than the 94 film did.
It was so draining. None of the characters had any personality whatsoever and the dialogue is awful. Everyone is trying to give a good performance, but they’ve been given awful direction and an awful script to work with. There’s no style to this movie, which is the biggest thing. Say what you want about the first movie, but there’s a distinct style there.
Bill Skarsgard doesn’t even have much of the makeup on. I really think they were trying to sell the film on his image, so they didn’t want to change his appearance too much… There were several sequences where the makeup would really vary on how smeared it was.
The main problem I have with this movie is that it’s not fun! The first movie at least had some fun, but there’s nothing like that here. It’s a dull, dull experience. They are trying to give a bit more airtime to the romance between Eric and Shelly, but that falls flat, and doesn’t serve to make either of them any more likeable.
The villains are probably the worst part of this movie. There’s no explanation behind their motivations and why they’re doing what they do. That would have been fine if they were just a bunch of thugs who got off on murdering people, but they added a paranormal element to it which doesn’t work because it’s incredibly underdeveloped. I suspect a large portion of this movie was left on the cutting room floor during the development process.
The film has an 18 rating so they can get away with some gore, but it never looks very real or even wince-inducing. It looks terrible.
Some of the action sequences are shot alright but they’re not great, if I’m honest. The only highlight was the Opera scene, and even then, it wasn’t very good since the editing in it was all over the place.
As I mentioned before, it is so dull beyond belief. This feels like one of the most paint-by-numbers movies I have ever seen. They somehow got themselves in a position where they don’t want to be tied to the original, but they want to capitalise on the name brand recognition, and it ends up appeasing no-one.
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