The original 1994 movie The Crow (Which I watched for the first time 12 hours or so prior to going to see this remake… Yeah I know, there’s a lot of solid movies I’ve never seen… Don’t tell JimmyZ I still haven’t seen Young Frankenstein), was Brandon Lee’s last film as he was accidentally shot and killed on set during filming. Since then, there have been a few sequels which have all received mostly negative reviews, and now 30 years later we have a reboot directed by Rupert Sanders, starring Bill Skarsgård as Eric Draven, and FKA twigs as Shelly.

The base premise for the movie is the same, Eric and Shelly are both murdered, and due to how his love for her, he is granted the ability to persist through death in order to avenge Shelly. The movie starts a bit rough, the connection between Shelly and Eric just feels shoehorned in and not overly compelling. The first hour or so of the film was spent establishing their relationship and why the antagonist of this film is attempting to kill Shelly.

Again, it took about half of this movie to even get to the premise of returning from death to avenge Shelly, it was slow, and I was by the point of his death almost fully set on a 3/10 rating for the movie. From the moment of their deaths onward to the end credits this was a masterpiece. Cut it down to start with their deaths and occasionally give brief exposition showcasing their relationship or who killed them and why, and I could have easily seen myself giving this 9 stars.

Overall the acting is good, the action scenes are packed, well executed, and gory. I often found myself comparing bits to the Deadpool movies. Gunfight in an SUV (Deadpool 1), Swimming through water as a metaphor for passing to the afterlife when you die (multiple times)(Deadpool 2) Despite being able to heal from any wound, Eric still feels all the pain, staggering when shot, and screaming out in pain when he has to do things like snap a compound fracture back into place for it to start healing and boy is he not a skilled fighter. Eric appears to be a fairly accurate shot any time he uses a gun, but give him a knife or sword and he’s just hacking away haphazardly. When you can’t die I guess you don’t need to be skilled with your weapon, if you have a weapon you’ll get a hit in eventually.

Judging the movie as a whole, it’s a 5 from me. If you think you need to see it in theaters and are running late don’t stress it even if you’re running 45 minutes behind… Somehow this move was simultaneously exceptional and terrible.