The Crow Remake feeds on original’s remains

The Crow,” directed by Rupert Sanders, is a lackluster film that gives the impression the producers are merely trying to reap the monetary benefits of the superhero film industry without having to put in much effort. This reimagining of the cult classic 90s film of the same name, which stars Brandon Lee, does not live up to the charm of the original film.

Bill Skarsgåard plays the main character, Eric, in the film, who is shown in the beginning of the film in a flashback to a traumatic childhood accident involving a dead horse. It is never properly explained what happened, and the flashbacks themselves were corny and the audience didn’’t feel any of Eric’’s pain when the flashbacks were shown. We first see him at a drug treatment center that looks more like a prison than a rehab center, where all of the patients wear goofy bright pink jumpsuits. Eric meets Shelly, his love interest in the film, played by FKA Twigs, at the rehab center. She is on the run from the main antagonist named Roeg, played by Danny Huston, who wants to kill her and send her soul to Hhell because she knows his secret — he made a deal with the devil that would give him eternal life in exchange for people’’s souls.

Eric and Shelly escape the rehab center together to get away from Roeg’s goons and they begin a short fling that’’s interrupted when Roeg sends his people after them and murders both of them.

After they are both killed, Eric gets sent to the underworld where he is told that he can save Shelly and bring her back from the depths of hell only if he can kill everyone responsible for Shelly and Eric’s deaths and put an end to Roeg’s madness. This is pretty much where the rest of the movie’’s plot begins.

There were some major plot holes in this film that hurt the film. It is assumed that Eric has drug issues because he starts the film at a rehab center, and yet there is not a single scene in the movie that shows him struggling with drugs or talking about addiction. At the end of the film, Eric makes a deal to trade his soul to the devil if the devil lets Shelly go free. This would have been a sad scene if the screenwriters and actors had done a convincing enough job to convince audience members of his love for her. He had only known Shelly for a week and all of a sudden he is willing to spend an eternity in hell if the devil lets her go.

The film had redeeming qualities with their production, with the action scenes and makeup being top-notch. The producers went all out in the horror movie gore, especially in the scene where Eric gets a sword and goes on a rampage. The makeup artists in the film matched the storyline well, creating designs that looked genuinely scary

Overall, this movie was just confusing most of the time. Roeg and Shelly’’s motives were hard to understand because the storyline didn’t provide enough time to flesh those characters out. nor was Shelly and Eric’s relationship was also not convincing enough for the stakes attached to them. The acting was really bad at times and felt like a CW show, and Eric’’s transformation into The Crow was paced poorly and left a lot to be desired. The characters were two dimensional, which made them neither not relatable nor likable and it makes it hard to enjoy a movie when none of the characters draw you in. This movie feels like a hollow shell and you will leave the theater disappointed and maybe even slightly depressed by how bad it is.

Movie rating: 3/10