In 1993, Brandon Lee, the son of the late international Hong Kong superstar Bruce Lee, was accidentally killed by an incorrectly loaded blank while filming a scene for The Crow. The film – an adaptation of James O’Barr’s 1980s comic set in crime-ravaged Detroit – concerned a goth hero resurrected from the afterlife as an immortal angel of death to do revenge on the ruthless criminals that murdered him and his fiancée. Lee’s tragic death propelled the film into grunge folklore, and acted as a somber coda to the purportedly cursed legacy of the Lee family. Throw in an iconic soundtrack featuring The Cure and Nine Inch Nails, and The Crow became a cult flick beloved by fans – even if it wasn’t particularly good.

And so inevitably, thirty years later, in idea-ravaged Hollywood, we have the reboot. Directed by Rupert Sanders, and starring Bill Skarsgård as the titular character, and FKA Twigs as Shelly, his not-long-for-this-world girlfriend, the word of mouth for the new Crow was not good. Rotten Tomatoes had it ranked at 6% (The Room is 24%, for reference). Many mastheads named The Crow as the worst film of 2024. Early reviews denounce The Crow as “atrocious” and “unfathomably awful.” Australian Alex Proyas, who directed the original, smugly declared the new film was a “cynical cash-grab,” even if there wasn’t “much cash to grab it seems.” Fans on Reddit have called for a boycott and have actively “downvoted” the film – as they did with the 2016 all-female Ghostbusters. So why the hate?

Part of the reason appears to be the changes to the film’s narrative and characters. In the original, Eric and fiancée are innocent civilians, gunned down in an act of random violence. But in the new fixture, FKA Twigs’ Shelley is drug-addled, on the run from supervillain Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston). She meets Eric – heavily tattooed and traumatised – in a unisex rehab prison. Shelley is drawn to Eric because he’s “so beautifully broken.” Despite his hulking frame, Skarsgård’s version of Eric Draven is more Mac Miller than Robert Smith. And we spend a lot of time with them; almost half the film is given to their world of mumblecore emotions, discarded pizza boxes, ashtrays, and ethereal, druggèd love – like a diluted Larry Clark film.

When the Crow does finally emerge, he’s a darker, violenter vision of the character than Brandon Lee’s. Covered in tattoos, blood and dirt, Skarsgård’s hero kills not in the name of justice, but in hate for the love that’s been taken away from him. It’s a grim characterisation, and the film has echoes of 2022’s unspeakably dull The Batman. But unlike that film, The Crow offers spectacle, blood and guts, and actual style. And it’s not for the squeamish.

Somewhere, deeply buried, is commentary about retribution itself; whether revenge is just another coping mechanism for trauma and really achieves anything. How many more story arcs can be resolved by one protagonist taking the law into his own hands? The Crow’s killing spree, divorced from its supernatural origins, is not worlds away from the active shooters and incels that punctuate the headlines in modern America. There’s an ingrained ugliness to the treatment here that invites us to ponder these challenging questions.

So, did we need this remake? Of course not. But it’s a far more worthy and entertaining retread than the haters want you to think. Unfortunately, the online backlash is already doing its work. Fans reject the more emo, woker version of the character. And that means The Crow is not the worst film of 2024, but it is likely to be its biggest box-office casualty.

 

The Crow opened yesterday in cinemas.