'The Crow' Takes a Stab at Reimagined Neo-Goth Romance

Taking on the gothic superhero classic, The Crow, was a risky endeavor and not because of its tragic backstory. 1993’s The Crow film, based on J. O’Barr’s comic, is mythical and much beloved for its music, its vibe and its star Brandon Lee, who died after a shooting scene during filming went awry. It inspired a handful of sequels that nobody remembers (they were all terrible) but the franchise always had a lot of promise for a reboot, especially with fans of horror and dark aesthetics more prevalent than ever. 

The 2024 reimagining –not a remake, the filmmakers stress– has been critically panned for the most part, but the negative press has also given the film a lot of exposure that set the bar pretty low in terms of cinematic experience, and audiences have found things to love about it, such as the sexy and subdued performances by the leads Bill Skarsg?rd (Pennywise in the IT films) and FKA Twigs, best known as an alternative music artist. 

It's markedly different from the original in terms of mood and narrative, though the basic premise is the same: a couple are brutally murdered and the male lead is given a chance to come back and avenge his partner thanks to the mystical power of the crows.

"The graphic novel was beloved to me," director Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsmen) tells Los Angeles, explaining that he wanted to delve deeper into the relationship and chemistry of the leads, which he felt was missing in the original. "The emotional story, to me, was about the universal feelings of love, loss and grief. And I think that's something we all go through in life. It's something that, sadly, is going to be the with us forever. And it was really about how I dealt with grief, and was dealing with grief at the time, and how do I put that into this world. I don't think you can make adaptations or even art for other people. You have to make it for yourself. So to me, the idea was [to make] a dark gothic romance that was in my world and in my imagination, which might not be what everyone expects or what everybody wants."

Even before this past opening weekend, early buzz on the film, which had been fittingly, in a sort of purgatory for years with different names attached in front of and behind the camera, was not great. Sanders seems to have naysayers in mind when he speaks about the finished product, but while not a hit by any stretch, it seems to be finding its niche. Its score on Rotten Tomatoes is 19% with critics but a much bigger 65% with audiences, and the latter is from a pool of over 500 versus only 19 reviewers. Though box office numbers were weak, had the movie gone straight to Netflix or another streaming site, it would have probably earned a top-viewed slot. 

Skarsg?rd is quite captivating as Eric, a former drug addict who falls in love with Shelly (Twigs) a troubled but passionate singer and pianist. Shelly is on the run from a rich and mysterious tycoon, who uses mind control to make innocent young people kill in exchange for his powers and riches. When his henchmen kill the couple for having photographic proof of his evil deeds, Eric has a chance to go back and avenge their deaths, and bring Shelly back.

But before the bludgeoning begins, and make no mistake, the second half of this movie is as violent and bloody as they come, we get a lot more screen time for the romance, an element that was only seen in flashbacks in the original. The couple make love and music, take baths and drugs and go dancing in sweaty nightclubs. 

Twigs tells us the club shoots in Prague were inspiring to her as a music artist and as a person. "I felt like I was going from one Crow set to another, because Prague is an incredibly beautiful gothic city with weird warehouses and buildings that house these incredible clubs, so I was just immersing myself in the culture of The Crow and then off set, immersing myself in the culture of Prague," she says. "I felt like in many ways, artistically, it brought me back to life. I feel like Shelly and I were kind of growing in tandem; The Crow was bringing Shelley back to life and giving her a more divine part and a deeper breath in the film, whilst in my personal life, I was getting a breath of air as well and discovering culture- the culture that was thriving when the original Crow was created. And I was like, wow, it still exists."

Twigs also tells Los Angeles that she's been dating gothic artist Jordan Hemingway, and that she has a lot of love for the black-loving subculture, especially the era represented by the original film. Still, the aesthetic and fashion seen in the new movie feels more natural and low key than some might expect. Save for homemade-looking tattoos and Eric's black-smudged eye makeup when he comes back from the dead, the fashion is cool and funky, not exactly fiendish and that's intentional. Twigs even helped style her own looks.

As a young adult who saw the first Crow movie in theaters (Universal Cineplex to be exact) with a group of black-clad club kids, I must concede a nostalgic reverence for the Brandon Lee film, mostly because of its amazing soundtrack featuring Nine Inch Nails, The Cure (who inspired O'Barr's comic character) and My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult (seen in the original), to name a few. Clearly, Sanders wasn't trying to please grown up Gen-X goths like myself with this take, but he did give us a couple nods (two retro tracks by Joy Division and Gary Numan amp up pivotal scenes).

Still, the new Crow is a modern movie for modern audiences with new music and new style. The film's marketing team even threw a big Crow-themed party featuring big names on the web with big followings and hot nightlife figures in L.A. (Abhora Rules from Dragula and Violet Chacki from RuPaul's Drag Race) and New York.

"I hope that my kids who are in their 20's respond to it in a way that's as visceral and obsessive as you did when you saw the original movie," Sanders tells me. "But like I said, time changes... I wanted to make a film that was  emotionally resonant, that was musically amazing, and that had wild action and R-rated sequences, that was a bit druggie and a bit sexy and a bit dark and emo. It's not a mainstream blockbuster."