One of my favorite movies (I have quite a few) is The Crow with Brandon Lee. The story, the acting, the cinematography, it's just. . . *chef's kiss* It's perfect. Sometimes you watch older movies, and you're like, why did I think this was awesome? Like The Covenant, for example. (If you have never watched that movie, do it. It's got baby Sebastian Stan in it, and honestly, it's so bad it's almost good. If that makes sense.) When I heard that there was going to be a remake of The Crow, I was immediately on guard. Leery. I love that movie so much that I couldn't imagine a better version of it. How can you replicate it? It's a cult classic. Also—and I know I am not the only one who thinks like this—I am so damn tired of remakes. Can we not get some new original movies, Hollywood? Come on. Remakes, live-actions of movies we don't need. It's utterly exhausting. Give us some new shit, y'all. Your girl Keely is bored.
So yes, admittedly, I was very leery about The Crow remake. However, then I heard who was playing Eric. Bill Skarsgård. He played Pennywise in the It movies. He was also on the show Hemlock Grove. He's been in quite a few movies and shows. He is a phenomenal actor. Seriously, he's amazing. Of course, his entire family is fucking talented as shit. His brothers include Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, Legend of Tarzan, The Stand, and so much more) and Gustaf Skarsgård (Vikings). Bill's father is Stellan Skarsgård who has seriously been in so many movies and shows that it's insane. Most would probably recognize him from Thor and Pirates of the Caribbean, more than likely. Simply put, Bill Skarsgård is talented as hell. Due to that, I was slightly less iffy about him playing Eric in The Crow.
Also, I saw the trailer, which made me feel better.
Paul, of course, reads all the reviews and was like, it's apparently really bad.
I always ignore the reviews. I don't like going into a movie with preconceived notions of what it will be like. My friend Bailey and I saw it on Friday, and I had some thoughts.
First, this is not like a scene-by-scene remake of the original movie. At all. It's vastly different. The same concept, the dude's girlfriend gets killed, and so does he, but he comes back and gets revenge. We get that. However, it's not a play-by-play of the original movie. I appreciated that a lot. They weren't trying to replicate what Brandon Lee did in The Crow. That was smart. It also was respectful to the memory of Brandon Lee and his legacy. (If you don't know about that, check out this article.)
They modernized this version. It wasn't set in the '90s or so. I liked that they didn't try to set this version also in the same era. Instead, it's set in the modern era. There are cell phones and social media and all that.
Now, I don't want to ruin this entire movie. I'd like you to see it and form your own opinions. So I won't go into massive detail about it. I will say a few things, however.
The pacing is off. It took about an hour to get to the movie's major action and revenge part. It definitely needed to pick up a bit. A lot. They were trying to show a love story between Eric (Bill Skarsgard) and Shelly (FKA Twigs). But it dragged on a lot. I was bored, honestly, at the beginning. It seemed to drag on. I was waiting for the murder to happen. This sounds weird, but you get me. The whole point of The Crow is that Eric returns for revenge. To right the wrong. In the OG movie, Eric and Shelley die immediately in the beginning, then boom, revenge. That's not how the remake did it. I think that was a bit of a disservice, honestly. As I said, it was slow. Yes, exposition is important. However, the exposition made this movie lag quite terribly.
Bill Skarsgard's Eric was different from Brandon Lee's, yet similar. His backstory was a bit unclear. It was heavily implied that his parents were either drunks or addicts. He possibly killed them. It was very clear. Eric himself was a tragedy—the epitome of emo sad boi. Bill, of course, is a great actor, and he embodied that—the tortured artist—yet with a darkness. I liked that a lot. It worked.
I'm not familiar with FKA Twigs, who played Shelly. I haven't seen her in any movies. From what I gathered, she's a British singer. While the chemistry between her and Skarsgard was sweet and felt very natural, she herself, as an actress, didn't shine. She sometimes seemed a bit wooden in her acting. Again, I've never seen her anything else. However, again, the chemistry was adorable. Many movies (and TV shows) fail to sell the love story between the leads. This is often due to the lack of chemistry between the actors.
That was not the case with Skarsgard and Twigs. They played off each other quite well. Frankly, they were steamy. Seriously, it was steamy. Hello.
Danny Huston played the villain Vincent Roeg, and honestly, I was a bit underwhelmed by him. It wasn't clear what exactly he was. There are a bit of spoilers here, but he apparently sold his soul for a long life. Okay, we got that. Then, his job was to corrupt innocent souls and send them on their way to hell. He would speak something weird and creepy in their ears, awakening their dark desires or what have you. So was he a demon? I wasn't sure. There was a certain supernatural element but it was rather vague. Eric went to this in-between place with crows and water, but it wasn't clear what it was?
Limbo?
Purgatory?
No idea.
Either way, the villain of the movie was a bit lackluster. He didn't feel. . .villainy enough? Does that make sense? Like the stakes weren't that high?
Other than those few things, I enjoyed the movie. The cinematography was gorgeous. It was gothic and gritty. Truly, Bill Skarsgard was the star in the movie. I look forward to seeing him in Nosferatu. All in all I'd rank this movie. . . a three and half out of five stars. A movie worth seeing, but know that it's not perfect. Worth it, nonetheless. Again, Bill Skarsgard.
Also, check out the teaser trailer for Nosferatu!
Until next time!
-K
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