My expectations were very low for this remake of the 1994 cult classic film The Crow. I was not sure why they remade the film and it did not look like it had a purpose to exist. However, I was hoping to be wrong about my low expectations.

Unfortunately, the film did not reach my low expectations.

According to IMDB, “Soulmates Eric (Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered when the demons of Shelly’s dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.“

There are a ton of problems with this movie. I did like Bill Skarsgård in the role of Eric (even though the short hair/mullet felt wrong). He certainly brought his abs to the screen. He was fine with what he was given so I would not say that Skarsgård was one of the problems.

The first hour of the movie was slow and kind of boring. They spend time introducing the characters, which normally I like, but this just did not seem to work. The writing on these characters was just weak and I was not invested at all.

This is also a major problem because I just did not get into the pairing of Eric and Shelly. They did not feel like soulmates to me and that truly hurts the story since the power of love is meant to be the key to Eric’s resurrection.

There is plenty of violence, especially in the third act. However there was a scene in that third act that took place at an opera house that just did not make much sense (because of the noise of the gunfire) and it was taking me out of the story.

Speaking of the story, it felt very much of a slog throughout the film and needlessly messy with the rules of what was going on.

There is not a way to do a review of a remake of The crow without comparing it to the original movie. It may not be fair, but it is unavoidable. This film is just so much worse than that film from 1994, there really was no reason to do a remake. There was nothing new or exciting added to the 2024 film to justify the remake or to have it stand on its own. I can’t imagine why, if given a choice, anyone would decide to watch the new film over the Brandon Lee film.

I do not think that this film will break into the group of movies competing for the worst movie of the year (I think it is up to 6 now), but it is not too far off from it. The Crow was unnecessary and more boring than it should have been.

1.4 stars