‘The Crow’ Reviews Call Bill Skarsgård Reboot ‘Brightening’ and ‘Horrifying’

This is not the first time James O’Barr’s comic book series has been adapted for the big screen, as Brandon Lee played Draven in the 1994 film of the same name. After Lee’s accidental death in the film, three sequels were produced , but failed to replicate the success of the original film.

Lionsgate tried to reboot the franchise in 2008, when serious superhero movies became a trend in Hollywood following the success of “X-Men,” “V For Vendetta” and “The Dark Knight.”

Although actors like Jason Momoa, Luke Evans and Bradley Cooper were all attached to the project, “The Crow” remained in development hell until April 2022, when Skarsgård was cast as Eric.

“The Crow” was finally released on Thursday and the reviews are terrible.

The remake of “The Crow” was panned by critics

Mashable’s Kirsty Puchko broke down the film’s new take on the story, which pits Eric against a demon who collects souls to make his life last longer on Earth. She described it as “tiring”, “incoherent” and “a familiar shell filled with awful, greasy nothing”.

In his review for The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney called it “an overly serious slow fest”, but noted that many of the problems stemmed from the script rather than the actors’ performances.

Witney Seibold offered a glimmer of positivity by praising one of the action scenes in his Slash Film review and said that the director “ultimately gets punchy and smart, using blades, bullets and Skarsgård’s lanky body to great effect , violently. It’s the only sequence where ‘The Sky’ is fun.” However, he still branded it “dull, lifeless, indistinct and motionless”.

Benjamin Lee of The Guardian described the reboot as “recklessly awful” and criticized the performances of Skarsgård and Twigs. He said: “There is simply no attraction, no drive, no passion, just B-roll of two lifeless actors posing for a subpar perfume ad.”

Reboots are often a great way for studios to reinvent stories and characters in a way that appeals to new audiences. For example, Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy took Batman away from the spandex and silliness of the 1990s and left the Caped Crusader in an overwhelmingly successful crime drama.

However, this is not always the case – especially for comic book movies. There have been plenty of poorly written superhero reboots that try to be too violent or too grounded — like 2015’s “Fantastic Four” and 2019’s “Hellboy.”

Unfortunately, “The Crow” seems to fall into that category rather than reaching the heights of the beloved 1994 film.