The Crow (2024)
August 23, 2024 10:15 PM - Subscribe
In this modern re-imagining of the 1994 cult classic, "The Crow," soulmates Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) are brutally murdered. Given a chance to save her, Eric must sacrifice himself and traverse the worlds of the living and the dead, seeking...
Well, you already know what he's seeking. You will have heard that this movie is a stinker. It's not. It's a low-mid supernatural action-thriller with occasional decent moments, and not nearly as incoherent as one might have expected given its tortured production history (though you can still see places where the pieces don't quite meet). Will it strike a chord with the Angsty Youth of today? I'm about thirty years too far along to answer that question.
(Note that there is a graphic scene of animal death at the beginning and in flashbacks thereafter. If you, like me, can handle seeing someone's face cut open but not a hair hurt on a companion animal's head, you will need to brace yourself or avoid. Also, somewhat worryingly, there is no AHS certification on the film and no assurance that animals weren't injured during filming.)
Well, you already know what he's seeking. You will have heard that this movie is a stinker. It's not. It's a low-mid supernatural action-thriller with occasional decent moments, and not nearly as incoherent as one might have expected given its tortured production history (though you can still see places where the pieces don't quite meet). Will it strike a chord with the Angsty Youth of today? I'm about thirty years too far along to answer that question.
(Note that there is a graphic scene of animal death at the beginning and in flashbacks thereafter. If you, like me, can handle seeing someone's face cut open but not a hair hurt on a companion animal's head, you will need to brace yourself or avoid. Also, somewhat worryingly, there is no AHS certification on the film and no assurance that animals weren't injured during filming.)
I've seen one excerpt from this, and it shows an attack in the lobby of an opera house, with multiple un-silenced gunshots... and the people inside are continuing to watch the opera as if the gunshots are completely inaudible inside the theater. How loud do the filmmakers think that opera is?
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:52 AM on August 24 [6 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:52 AM on August 24 [6 favorites]
I'll probably watch this on Prime eventually. The Crow is a really fascinating piece of IP to me; the original comic is beautifully drawn but not really a literary triumph, and the only thing more amazing than it siring like ten movies and a TV show (...I think?) is that none of the live action stuff is really that great, either. The original movie is the best Crow thing I've seen, but I think even that is mostly running on vibes generated by a fine central performance and a great OST.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:20 AM on August 24 [8 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:20 AM on August 24 [8 favorites]
Worst cinematography I’ve seen in years.
You have led a charmed life!
it shows an attack in the lobby of an opera house, with multiple un-silenced gunshots... and the people inside are continuing to watch the opera as if the gunshots are completely inaudible inside the theater
This is indeed 100% what happened, and it goes on for a good five minutes, too. They could've used silencers, but I guess that wouldn't have looked as cool? I was more irritated they couldn't find an appropriate piece of Orfeo et Eurydice to use, though.
...Like I said, not a good movie. Just not the world-historical dud you might expect from the reviews.
posted by praemunire at 10:54 AM on August 24 [3 favorites]
You have led a charmed life!
it shows an attack in the lobby of an opera house, with multiple un-silenced gunshots... and the people inside are continuing to watch the opera as if the gunshots are completely inaudible inside the theater
This is indeed 100% what happened, and it goes on for a good five minutes, too. They could've used silencers, but I guess that wouldn't have looked as cool? I was more irritated they couldn't find an appropriate piece of Orfeo et Eurydice to use, though.
...Like I said, not a good movie. Just not the world-historical dud you might expect from the reviews.
posted by praemunire at 10:54 AM on August 24 [3 favorites]
(...Thinking about it, if I had to choose between the other movie of the last five years that featured black animals swirling around our hero and this, and could cut out the awful horse incident, I would probably rather sit through this again than through Morbius, and I generally like vampire tropes better than revenge zombie ones.)
posted by praemunire at 10:57 AM on August 24
posted by praemunire at 10:57 AM on August 24
From the YT comments to the trailer: In the original, Eric looks like he plays guitar for Nine Inch Nails. In the reboot, Eric looks like he raps on SoundCloud
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:20 PM on August 24 [10 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:20 PM on August 24 [10 favorites]
Another reviewer compared, in appearance, Lee to a dancer-assassin and Skarsgård to a clay golem.
Skarsgård actually plays him as a sad but sort of sweet fuckup who's all nerve endings beneath a layer of trauma-stoicism. A fair number of my relatives were like this when they were teenagers/young men, and for good reason, so maybe my reading was a little more charitable than others' might be. Certainly it's not a fun type of kid for most adults to interact with/contemplate.
posted by praemunire at 5:18 PM on August 24 [1 favorite]
Skarsgård actually plays him as a sad but sort of sweet fuckup who's all nerve endings beneath a layer of trauma-stoicism. A fair number of my relatives were like this when they were teenagers/young men, and for good reason, so maybe my reading was a little more charitable than others' might be. Certainly it's not a fun type of kid for most adults to interact with/contemplate.
posted by praemunire at 5:18 PM on August 24 [1 favorite]
That wasn't very good, but it wasn't a world-class flop like I'd been hearing, either.
I did like the afterlife/limbo/purgatory being an Escher-esque abandoned train station, but I've got questions for a lot of the rest of it.
- How did Vincent Roeg, by all accounts a very intelligent if evil immortal, not notice someone shooting phone video less than ten feet away from the knife murder he'd orchestrated with his mind control powers?
- Why, when Shelly escaped and was caught by the police and sent to that weird prison-cum-rehab center, did it take Roeg's minions so long to find her? Getting through the courts is a months-long process at least, and someone with Roeg's obvious resources and connections should have been able to find her much sooner than we see in the film.
- Speaking of the prison/rehab, why does it simultaneously have paramilitary-looking guards but security so lax that you can just slip off your ankle monitor and get over one layer of razor wire to get free?
- Why, after Eric and Shelly escaped and were fugitives, did they not only stay in town, but go out clubbing and showing their faces all over the place? (On a related note, who were those people they went raving in the middle of the wilderness with? Why didn't they get a ride to the next town from them?) How did Shelly manage to go unnoticed by Roeg's henchpeople, who would absolutely have been looking for her?
(Edited to add: I forgot to mention the point about unsilenced pistols in an echo-y opera house lobby, but the point's already been made for me.)
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:39 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]
I did like the afterlife/limbo/purgatory being an Escher-esque abandoned train station, but I've got questions for a lot of the rest of it.
- How did Vincent Roeg, by all accounts a very intelligent if evil immortal, not notice someone shooting phone video less than ten feet away from the knife murder he'd orchestrated with his mind control powers?
- Why, when Shelly escaped and was caught by the police and sent to that weird prison-cum-rehab center, did it take Roeg's minions so long to find her? Getting through the courts is a months-long process at least, and someone with Roeg's obvious resources and connections should have been able to find her much sooner than we see in the film.
- Speaking of the prison/rehab, why does it simultaneously have paramilitary-looking guards but security so lax that you can just slip off your ankle monitor and get over one layer of razor wire to get free?
- Why, after Eric and Shelly escaped and were fugitives, did they not only stay in town, but go out clubbing and showing their faces all over the place? (On a related note, who were those people they went raving in the middle of the wilderness with? Why didn't they get a ride to the next town from them?) How did Shelly manage to go unnoticed by Roeg's henchpeople, who would absolutely have been looking for her?
(Edited to add: I forgot to mention the point about unsilenced pistols in an echo-y opera house lobby, but the point's already been made for me.)
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:39 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]
Just did a group watch with some friends, with reactions ranging from straight up anger at how bad it was to a more mixed "well, there was some quality mayhem and some of the shots were pretty."
Holy hell, what a mess. I was more on the "some of the mayhem was interesting" side of the fence.
I guess my biggest core issue is that "a love so great that it will transcend death" is a very, very big thing to have to sell, and unlike the usual "show don't tell" rule, I think this is one area where a little more telling and a lot less showing would have gone a long way.
The leads were, like, aggressively unappealing to me, individually and collectively. They're even shitty houseguests! All I could think was this is the love that brings some guy back from the dead? My wife and I have a much better relationship than this co-enabling trash fire! Is the Magical Limbo Man wrong, maybe? Does the crow just randomly glom onto guys with mullets?
So dropping the first 35 minutes, kicking off with the murder and some gauzy flashbacks would have been way better, I think.
And with no confidence in that underpinning it's hard to buy into the rest of it. For a chunk of the movie I felt like we were a few steps away from a much leaner, more interesting movie where Crowst Malone (hat tip to my pal who watched this with us) isn't necessarily the hero. At one point he's full on Sword Murder Zombie just killing security dudes, who are probably just guys that couldn't make it through Cop School and take on gigs for $25 an hour working for rich assholes. An emotionally stunted guy fuelled by an 8th-grader's notion of "love" into being a sword zombie working on potentially very bad information could be a great movie! Which this wasn't!
All in, in the realm of unnecessary remakes/reboots/sidequels, I think I preferred Dirtbag Crow to Dirtbag Hellboy, but only because it was a bit more fun to goof on.
posted by Shepherd at 5:29 PM on September 22 [2 favorites]
Holy hell, what a mess. I was more on the "some of the mayhem was interesting" side of the fence.
I guess my biggest core issue is that "a love so great that it will transcend death" is a very, very big thing to have to sell, and unlike the usual "show don't tell" rule, I think this is one area where a little more telling and a lot less showing would have gone a long way.
The leads were, like, aggressively unappealing to me, individually and collectively. They're even shitty houseguests! All I could think was this is the love that brings some guy back from the dead? My wife and I have a much better relationship than this co-enabling trash fire! Is the Magical Limbo Man wrong, maybe? Does the crow just randomly glom onto guys with mullets?
So dropping the first 35 minutes, kicking off with the murder and some gauzy flashbacks would have been way better, I think.
And with no confidence in that underpinning it's hard to buy into the rest of it. For a chunk of the movie I felt like we were a few steps away from a much leaner, more interesting movie where Crowst Malone (hat tip to my pal who watched this with us) isn't necessarily the hero. At one point he's full on Sword Murder Zombie just killing security dudes, who are probably just guys that couldn't make it through Cop School and take on gigs for $25 an hour working for rich assholes. An emotionally stunted guy fuelled by an 8th-grader's notion of "love" into being a sword zombie working on potentially very bad information could be a great movie! Which this wasn't!
All in, in the realm of unnecessary remakes/reboots/sidequels, I think I preferred Dirtbag Crow to Dirtbag Hellboy, but only because it was a bit more fun to goof on.
posted by Shepherd at 5:29 PM on September 22 [2 favorites]
I loved the original 1994 movie. The protagonist is good heart-ed and revenging against a an unjust world - with wicked guitars.
Here, what the fuck, I don't know. What's going on? He's a skid. She's a skid. Ok. So? They never made it out and are emo-ing-off over "stuff."
Terrible.
posted by porpoise at 11:21 PM on November 10
Here, what the fuck, I don't know. What's going on? He's a skid. She's a skid. Ok. So? They never made it out and are emo-ing-off over "stuff."
Terrible.
posted by porpoise at 11:21 PM on November 10
I've always said that the actual premise of the 1994 film version is "What if Batman and the Joker were the same person?" I never got the sense that this version understood the damaged chaos swirling around amongst all of the retribution and justice-seeking.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:51 AM on November 11 [1 favorite]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:51 AM on November 11 [1 favorite]
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posted by Ideefixe at 7:22 AM on August 24 [2 favorites]