WARNING: The following review contains strong language and violent movie stills. We normally try to stay family friendly at KabOOOOOm, but we felt it important to emphasize how strongly Roy felt about this film. – EiC Matt Morrison

I saw The Crow remake on the Friday night it released. I was the only person in my Cinemark XD theater screening. This was fortunate, as I wound up cursing loudly throughout the whole movie.

Let me just rip the bandage off and get it over with: this movie is fucking terrible. Never have I seen such a perfect example of the Peter Griffin statement regarding a movie insisting upon itself. This film wants to be a profound statement on grief and love. In the end, all we get is cinematic ca-ca, as corporate-driven and soulless as a modern-day Hot Topic.

The film completely ignores everything from the comics they are based upon but character names. Small wonder, as the film had 31 executive producers. They are also presented first in the opening credits rather than the cast. If that is not a red flag…

The film stars Bill Skarsgård as Eric Draven, a sad, sad, sad suicidal man. (Admittedly, I am guessing at the suicidal part. We get the hints with the scars he has on his wrists.) When we first see the adult Eric, he is in a jail-like rehab center, having recurring nightmares of his horse dying when he was a kid. He is unliked by the others in the joint because…well, we don’t know. This is one of the many things in the movie that, like the wrist scars, goes unexplained. This is ironic, given how much of the movie is devoted to explaining the reasoning for things where we didn’t ask for it and don’t need it. 

Joining Eric in rehab is Shelly, played by singer FKA Twig. She is in rehab because she is hiding from an organization who wants her dead for having footage of something she shouldn’t have. They both fall in love and escape rehab when her enemies come looking for her. And then the film drags.

And when I say it drags, I mean IT DRAGS. Like walking through the Swamps of Sadness in ski boots kind of slow drag. We get a build up of their love story that honestly could have been trimmed down or presented as flashbacks like the original film. It honestly makes you wonder if you are watching a Lifetime movie.

Suddenly, Eric and Shelly are killed by hitmen working for a villain who is both an agent of Satan and immortal. This is Vincent, played by actor Danny Huston. Despite the above description, he is one of the most boring villains in cinematic history. He is also poorly developed and a walking plothole. No explanation is given as to how he got his demonic powers or why. It’s just mentioned and it’s there and that’s it. Pheh.

Eric descends into Limbo, which looks like a muddy train crossroad and learns of the power of The Crow. He uses it to go back and avenge his death and that of his now dead true love. But first, we get more exposition and slow dragging plot scenes! Oh goodie! Just what we wanted in a comic book movie!

There is so much unnecessary exposition that when we finally do get the action we hoped for in a movie like this, it comes delivered to us like a plate of Twinkies covered in pudding and whipped cream. There’s only about five to six minutes of action in the entire two-hour film amid all the explanations we don’t care about. These action scenes, as directed by Rupert Sanders, play out like John Wick crossed over with Hanna-Barbera and not in a fun way. 

The film tries too hard to utilize tropes of horror and shock gore to hold your attention. This comes in two different forms; boring been-there, done-that slasher scenes and cartoonish Claymation come to life. This is particularly true during the opera sequence, where a guy has his head sliced off from his jawline with a samurai sword. It is one of the goofiest-looking deaths in horror history. Imagine Silly Putty being cut by a plastic butter knife.

Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twig do the best they can with the material that they were given, but the material is horrid. I hate having a hot take like this, but I think the only people who will like this new version of The Crow are those who are easily entertained by pointless gore and violence. It is poorly executed on every level, but not in a way where you can have fun with it ironically.

If I could give this film a zero under our system, I would. As it stands, this is the worst movie I’ve seen all year and I saw Madame Web.