First Look: Is This 'The Crow' for the Post Malone Generation?

By Jen Maravegias | Film | February 28, 2024 |

After his turn as Pennywise the Clown, the interesting performances he gave in Netflix’ quirky, under-appreciated Hemlock Grove, and in Hulu’s Castle Rock we should probably have faith in Bill Skarsgård’s ability to pull off a remake of 1994’s grunge-metal movie hit The Crow.

But The Crow is such a precise snapshot of 1994’s cultural aesthetic, and it still has such a stranglehold on the hearts and minds of Gen X’ers and Elder Millennials that a direct remake feels like a bad idea. Here we are anyway, staring down the barrel of this remake with Skarsgård as Eric Draven (played by Brandon Lee in the original) and FKA Twigs as his doomed fiancée, Shelly.

Director Rupert Sanders (Snow White And The Huntsman, Ghost In The Shell) is calling this a tribute to Lee and the original. But he’s also planning to “have a more even balance between light and dark” in the story. To which I say, no thank you!

Moody goths, grunge kids, and metal heads united to make the original a hit thirty years ago because it spoke directly to our spiritual angst and anger with its darkness. It’s a story about pain, sorrow, and revenge. Bloody revenge. And the occasional quippy one-liner that some of us still quote.

In the First Look photos released by Lionsgate Eric Draven is wearing goth cosplay over white-boy rapper tattoos. He looks less like The Crow and more like some misguided idiot who calls himself T$e £r0ww. This is The Crow for the Post Malone generation. Do they even know Devil’s Night?