It had been quite awhile since I had seen the 1994 version of The Crow. My mind had concocted a different, exaggerated version of the film in my head. In fact, I've probably spent more time reading about Brandon Lee's death and the curses surrounding the Lee family than the total time spent watching the movie. I phrase it that way because I know I've never sat and watched The Crow the way movies are meant to be watched. Ideally, a movie is meant to be watched in a theater with undivided attention on the screen. It was watched in bits and pieces over the years.
The Crow (2024) managed to have my undivided attention. I hadn't seen trailer or any promotional materials for the movie. I had no clue it was being released until I checked to see what was playing this week, in the mood for a movie.
Having low to not expectations is often the best way to experience anything. Whether it's meeting new people, a first date, a new job, reading a book picked up off a shelf, little expectation offers an open eye and breeds intrigue.
Eric Draven is played by Bill Skarsgard. In this telling, Eric seems to have experienced some sort of childhood trauma which has led him to becoming a broken and scarred individual.
He shows some stereotypical signs a person of trauma shows, he is covered in tattoos, a form of self harm some find soothing.
The moment that sticks out for me is that he appears to have lived on a farm in a trailer and had to watch a horse he loved die after being tangled in barbed wire. It seems like he may have been a neglected child. This version of the character also uses drugs to cope with his pain.
As an adult, he is imprisoned in facility and I don't remember being told or shown why.
This is where he meets Shelly.
This is dramatically different than the bits I've read in comic and what is shown in the 1994 version of this story.
This sets up the characters to have a toxic relationship. The drink, they use drugs, they have sex. They aren't physically or emotionally abusive to one another but they do feed into each other's coping mechanisms.
It's not all bad, they do have friends and they are shown having fun outdoors.
They have dark senses of humor that people with trauma often have. I'm glad in their dark humor when they talk about death and following each other to the end and their story being told or followed that they make a quip about angsty teenagers as this is definitely the type of movie and they are the type of characters that will attract that following.
They are also the type of people that would put others they love before themselves. They're value of self and love experience of happiness comes from external sources.
Eric Draven is the prime example of a character who would get shot and stabbed repeatedly to try to set things right for his loved one and spoilers (highlight to read) he is the type that would offer to trade his place in the land of the living for someone who is in hell because he both loves them more than himself, which is likely not that great of a leap for him to take.
I was curious what this movie would do to separate itself from the original, there are things left out and things added in I think are for the better.
I have a deep interest in how trauma changes people and The Crow is about grief and dealing with trauma. I liked that this version was already dealing with something before having something even worse happen.
My initial impressions of The Crow would have been through the eyes of a child and through a TV edited version. Either way, even the mention of someone having to witness their loved one raped and murdered casted an impression that told a different tale than what was depicted on screen.
I had to try to watch it again, 1994 in 2024 and it did not hold up what I had concocted in my memory. I couldn't feel Eric's pain as he hunted down each of the gang members who murdered Shelly. We are briefly shown in the movie what happened to her. While I'm glad it's not revisited repeatedly, it is supposed to be the emotional driving force for the main character and the emotional notes are not hit as he goes after the gang members.
I haven't completed the comic yet but it does this a much more decompressed way, the reader getting bits and pieces of the back story as to what happened as Eric gets vengeance, kill to kill. That is a luxury the medium offers. This might be why I liked the 2024 version more than the 1994 version, it changes the source of the pain for Eric in a way that fits the pacing for a movie. While writing this I've done a couple of google searches in an effort to get some details right. It looks like the movie is not doing well in the box office.
I hope it does well on streaming because I did enjoy it more than the original. I think a streaming release around Halloween would fit well.
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