The reviews are in and critics are claiming that the new remake of The Crow should have been released straight to theaters.
The dark superhero film starring Bill Skargård and singer FKA Twigs hit theaters Friday, but reviews remained under embargo until about the start of previews Thursday night. Hollywood forecasters say it’s a sign that studios are worried about a bad reception.
That turned out to be a correct prediction, as the film currently holds a disappointing 14 percent bad rating among the most prestigious critics polled by Rotten tomatoes.
The Crow does a little better on Metacritictaking into account the strength of the pans and the praise, it still only scored a 30 out of 100.
Skarsgård stars in the remake of the 1994 hit film. He is murdered along with his lover Shelly (formerly known as Twigs), but is brought back to life with the promise that he can bring Shelly back to life if he takes out the gangster who murdered them.
Critics have slammed the new reboot of The Crow, which follows in the wake of the 1994 original and stars Bill Skarsgård (pictured) and FKA Twigs
The 1994 original was a box office success, but the film was plagued by tragedy after lead actor Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, was killed in an on-set accident that destroyed a prop gun belonging to one of his co-stars.
Several critics criticized the new version of The Crow for placing more emphasis on the grim atmosphere than on the script or the acting.
Brandon Yu, writing for the New York Timesaccused the film of failing to live up to the promises of the original film, while simultaneously trying to escape those expectations.
He noted that the film’s creators called it a “reboot” rather than a “remake,” as they claimed they had attempted to adapt James O’Barr’s graphic novel of the same name rather than basing their film on the 1994 version directed by Alex Proyas.
While Yu called it a “sensible distinction,” he added that it was a “likely pointless rejection to live in the shadow of not only a cult classic but also a tragic and storied legacy,” citing Lee’s death, “which obscured and ultimately fueled the original film’s beloved status.”
“The Crow of 2024 was never intended to be, and never could be, a version of that film, a rawly stylized, gritty Gothic melodrama whose pain and sorrow were so deeply absorbed by fans because those same things seeped outside the box,” he wrote, before deriding it as a “Hot Topic-esque” reworking of the material.
For the AV clubMatthew Jackson gave The Crow a D rating, lamenting that even though the film doesn’t attempt to be a remake of the original, viewers familiar with the 1994 film will find it difficult not to compare the new version (negatively) to it.
While it wasn’t a direct remake, he didn’t think it was a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel either. Instead, it was a strange hybrid.
Brandon Yu, writing for the New York Times, accused the film of failing to live up to the promise of the original film, though it called itself a “reboot” to avoid that criticism.
The Crow (1994) was a box office success, but was marred by tragedy when lead actor Brandon Lee (pictured) was killed in a gun accident on set
For Vulture, Alison Wilmore said The Crow was “messily directed,” based on a screenplay that was “lightweight” compared to the original
“The results are bleak, unimaginative and—despite the presence of a few genuinely good actors—fatiguing to watch,” he wrote.
In a scorching pan, VultureAlison Wilmore wrote that the new Crow was “messy” directed by Rupert Sanders and had a screenplay by Zach Baylin and William Schneider that was “light” compared to David J. Schow and John Shirley’s work on the 1994 film.
She criticized the leads in the new film for their “complete lack of chemistry” and wondered if the two might have been inspired by the messy, public romance between Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox.
For The guardBenjamin Lee gave The Crow one out of five stars and called it one of the “most horrible films” of the year.
He admitted that he found it “truly astonishing” how incredibly bad the long-awaited film turned out to be.
“The Crow 2.0 is a total, head-to-head disaster, incoherent in plot and sloppily made, destined to join the annals of the worst, most pointless remakes ever made,” he wrote.
Writing for the Los Angeles TimesRobert Abele mocked the remakes of Skarsgård and FKA Twigs’ love scenes, labeling them an “unbearable audition for Euphoria.” He also criticized the “flat, gray darkness of Steve Annis’ cinematography and Robin Brown’s production design.”
Although he wrote that Twigs’ role was “so poorly realized” that it was unlikely to damage her musical career, the much more accomplished Skarsgård was the one “who had to worry” about his future career prospects.
Even the more positive reviews of The Crow were mostly mixed.
She criticized the new film’s leads for their “complete lack of chemistry” and wondered if the two could have been inspired by the messy, public romance between Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox.
For The Guardian, Benjamin Lee gave The Crow one out of five stars and called it one of the “most horrific films” of the year
The Crow, which is playing in major theaters, has a disappointing 14 percent score from the most prestigious critics polled by Rotten Tomatoes.
Writing for VarietyDennis Harvey said the new version was not a “slam dunk” but not an “unwatchable failure” either.
Although he didn’t have much enthusiasm for a sequel, he did think the film was better than the many sequels that followed 1994’s Crow.
For the Associated PressMark Kennedy wrote that the film “isn’t bad — and it gets better as it goes along,” but that it ultimately “can’t escape Lee and the 1994 original, even as it builds a more allegorical framework for the smartphone generation.”
The Crow is now in wide release in theaters.