On the lengthy and winding street, we lastly reached “The Raven” — the village about 15 years of remakes, rewrites and director adjustments – the one fixed that continues to be is that this model is not going to be a remake of 1994 movie with the identical title. The mantra was that it might as a substitute be a reimagining of James O’Barr’s unique comedian e book sequence a few man raised from the useless who takes revenge on the small-time gangsters who killed him and his fiancee.
It is a affordable distinction to make for any movie remake, however here is a very necessary and probably ineffective disclaimer to keep away from present within the shadow of not solely a cult basic, however a tragic and historic legacy – the accidental on-set death of its star Brandon Lee — that obscured and in the end fueled the beloved standing of the unique movie. 2024’s “The Crow” was by no means meant to be, by no means may very well be, a model of that movie, a crudely stylized, rough-and-tumble gothic melodrama whose ache and anguish had been so deeply absorbed by followers as a result of these very issues bled past body.
That, in fact, is all nicely and good. However ultimately, what this Rupert Sanders-directed model spiritually derives from is neither the film nor the comedian e book, however fairly the flat in style picture the film created— Hot topic-style model of the alternate consciousness.
“Do you assume angsty youngsters would construct us sanctuaries?” Shelly (FKA twigs) asks Eric (Invoice Skarsgård) about their love story, the movie’s central romance, whose edgy sensibility is full of as a lot real feeling as a starring fragrance advert of Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox. You would possibly consider Shelley’s line as a sort of nod to how Lee’s picture turned a beacon of darkish cynicism for a complete technology.
However the true spotlight is that the movie itself is the embodiment of that sort of hole worship of emo youngsters, throwing imprecise echoes of The Joker, John Wick and Constantine into the washer and hoping pale shades of black eyeliner stay.
When Shelly asks Eric this query, she struggles to inform him about her darkish previous. The 2 misplaced souls met in rehab—Shelley winds up Eric as a geeky pixie dream woman who would possibly actually have sprung from the thoughts of an angsty teenager—however what Shelley did was motivated by a darker determine, a religious being named Vincent (Danny Huston) who, after making a take care of the satan, controls and disposes of harmless lives. Vincent’s henchmen finally come for Shelly and Eric, killing them. Nonetheless, Eric is introduced out of purgatory after being promised that he can resurrect Shelly if he defeats Vincent.
It is a far cry from the small story of the vigilante’s supply materials, just about taking The Crow’s namesake and placing it right into a thinly stylized supernatural superhero film. The core he hopes to protect, and the center that made the flawed 1994 movie so enduringly resonant, is what it most blatantly bastardizes: the dual forces of affection and grief and the mindless rage carried by real life tragedy.
Whether or not actual or imagined, actual ache has all the time been what introduced Raven out of the grave and gave that means to his story. On this makeover, he is dug as much as put on a Halloween costume.
The crow
Rated R for sturdy violence, language, sexuality, nudity and drug use. Length: 1 hour 51 minutes. Within the theaters.
