The New ‘Crow’ Is Almost Superior to the Original

Rupert Sanders is one of the only remaining unsung “vulgar auteurs” of the original definition: an actual artist striving in the bleak modern studio system. He dredges his entire oeuvre from the IP mines; The Crow marks his second 90s grittied-up cult classic remake in a row, after ‘Ghost In The Shell’. If anyone would appear to be a hack sight unseen, it’d be him. But who is he as an artist?

Sanders is arguably the most “dysphoric” of contemporary non-horror directors. Identity and The Body is at the center of his work, his slippery digital surfaces evoking empty mirrors. His Snow White and the Huntsman contrasted a dirtied Kristen Stewart with Charlize Theron’s queen’s perfectionist vanity, and the maligned but brilliantly autocritical Ghost In The Shell similarly mined the original’s Cartesian core for tail eating self reflexivity. His cancelled in every way would-be Scarlet Johansson feature Rub & Tug would have literalized his trans interests. In his The Crow, Deadpool-style gorey immmortality wracks Bill Skarsgaard’s hunky junkie bod as Sanders broods unnfettered. 

In Ghost in the Shell, Sanders borrowed from the Manga to freshen the narrative of the classic. With The Crow, he radically alters the structure, setting up the central murders with a probably too-long set up of Skaarsgaard and FKA Twigs rehab-born relationship. His legitimate directorial ability should be readily apparent with his careful staging, a balletic interplay of cinematographical glows, sheens and mud slaps, and attention to performance. Skarsgaard in particular is great, parlaying his usual twitchiness into timid vulnerability. Danny Huston cuts a far more interesting villain than 1994’s Michael Wincott, and his own supernatual abilities prove crucial to the film’s improvement over the original. Wincott’s Top Dollar’s earthbound criminality makes him no match for Eric Draven, turning the original into a childish power fantasy; here it’s a fair fight. Mercifully, Sanders also is very conservative with the facepaint in both application and screentime. 

When people throw around “emo” or “Hot Topic” as a shorthand for to slander the raw and real pubsescent angst of the end of childhood for the mentally ill, as was far more common in the 2000s, the original 1994 The Crow is likely a key example to display the alleged emptiness. With its cloying Darkness and cheap excuse for “stylishness” that pervaded its decade, it’s the most legitimately “Chuunibyou” work in existence (a Japanese term for just this sort of thing). With a reputation unfairly bolstered by genuine tragedy, much like its goth staple cohort Joy Division, the work itself is simply not competent and not in an interesting way. Sanders, even with his most middling effort, easily tops the sloppy hack job from Alex Proyas.

Despite everything, this is actually Sanders’ most fun film. On pure character, the dialogue is usually quite decent and the leads are sexy. He breaks out plenty of goth classics for the soundtrack that are often more major key than the unbearable glowering Matt Reeves tone one may fear from the film. He deploys these flourishes with a little more rhythmic clumsiness than would be preferable, but flourish they do.

The climax of the film uses a familiar trick, an opera-scored bloodfest fight scene, though distinguished by the sick satanic subject matter of the opera itself. Skarsgaard’s body quivers in taking on volleys of gunfire, and that’s where Sanders localizes the corporeal quality of his auteurism. Unfortunately, that’s about it; it’s tough to say he really does enough with the material, especially considering the longwindedness of act one. It’s a bit of a stumble for an ascending filmmaker, but at least it’s a film by a real one indeed.