The Crow
Rupert Sanders’ stylish, noirish reboot of the graphic novel brings an almost unprecedented darkness and violence to the comic-book genre.
Caw!: Bill Skarsgård
Photo by Larry Horricks. Image courtesy of Entertainment Film Distributors.
Bruce Wayne had his bats, Peter Parker his silk webs and Scott Lang his army of ants. Eric Draven had a white horse, but after it died in his childhood he replaced it with a grudge against humanity. The crows came later. Feeling “completely and utterly alone,” Eric descends into an insular world of self-recrimination, drugs and dermal graffiti. Then, at the Serenity Park Recovery Center, he is befriended by a like-minded, damaged soul with a weakness for skin art. When she, Shelly (FKA Twigs), suspects that her life is in danger, she and Eric (Bill Skarsgård) manage to scale the high, barbed wire fence of the facility and make a run for it. For the first time in his life, Eric feels an affinity with another human being and the couple embark on an odyssey of self-discovery, love-making and the imbibing of recreational substances.
All this is unfolded at a lugubrious, almost elegiac pace, filmed in the style of a high-end haute couture commercial as Shelly whispers soporific sweet nothings into Eric’s pierced ear. But, this being a reboot of the franchise based on James O'Barr’s comic book series, Eric has yet to be transformed into an avenging angel and to acquire his superpower. Like Deadpool and Wolverine before him (this summer), Eric develops the ability to self-heal his wounds and to attain a kind of immortality.
The director Rupert Sanders has a way of bringing a fresh aesthetic to familiar material, as he did with his accomplished Snow White and the Huntsman and the Americanisation of Ghost in the Shell. He is a masterful filmmaker, and The Crow – with its persistent rainfall and nocturnal settings – is an unsettling fever dream, prepping audiences for Todd Phillips' upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux this October. Indeed, with Eric’s dysfunctional start in life, painted face and demonic upturned smear of a smile, he is a sibling in sin of the vengeful Joker. This nightmarish scenario, set in a non-specific limbo, should appeal to those who lapped up Joker and Matt Reeves’ turgid The Batman. Fantasy doesn’t come much darker than this and, along with the stomach-churning prosthetic effects, it is guaranteed to give the weak-kneed endless sleepless nights. In the land of eternal despair, logic is not a prerequisite, any more than it is in one’s worst nightmares. Fantasy has many faces, but one might wish to choose one’s poison with some care.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Bill Skarsgård, FKA Twigs, Sami Bouajila, Josette Simon, Laura Birn, Danny Huston, Isabella Wei, Jordan Bolger, Brian Caspe.
Dir Rupert Sanders, Pro Edward R. Pressman, Samuel Hadida, Victor Hadida, John Jencks and Molly Hassell, Ex Pro Joe Simpson, Simon Williams, Jonathan Bross, Juliana Lubin, Henry Winterstern, Arianne Fraser, Delphine Perrier, Micah Green, Daniel Steinman, Dan Friedkin, Jay Taylor, Kwesi Dickson, Lorna Soonhee, Sam Pressman, Kevan Van Thompson, Ryan Kavanaugh, Kenneth Halsband, Brett Dahl, Joe Neurauter, Philipp Kreuzer, Johanna Watts, Jon Spaihts, William Schneider, Rupert Sanders and Malcolm Gray, Screenplay Zach Baylin and William Schneider, Ph Steve Annis, Pro Des Robin Brown, Ed Chris Dickens and Neil Smith, Music Volker Bertelmann, Costumes Kurt and Bart, Sound George Riley.
Hassell Free Productions/The Electric Shadow Company/Davis Films/Pressman Film/Ashland Hill Media Finance/Media Capital Technologies/30West-Entertainment Film Distributors.
110 mins. USA/UK/France. 2024. UK and US Rel: 23 August 2024. Cert. 18.
