'The Crow' Review: Remake Has Too Much Trash and Not Enough Myth

The dirty secret about movies about hellish cityscapes drenched in rain and blood is that they ultimately stir not so much fears of future decay as tourist fantasies. (When will theme parks realize that “The Blade Runner Experience” is sure to break attendance records?)

Alex Proyas’s 1994 film “The Crow,” adapted from James O’Barr’s graphic novel, understood that appeal implicitly, offering tactile gothic revenge in a wrecked Detroit in the style of a grotesque circus. But in our current glut of cinematic dystopias, we’ve moved away from that kind of immersive spectacle. A good example is the grim, pedestrian, dull version of O’Barr’s story, also called “The Crow,” this time directed by Rupert Sanders. It’s like a protest against entertainment.

This time around, the ghostly Bill Skarsgård is our avenger back from the dead. But before he can paint his eyes black for a murderous date with crow-powered destiny, he’s given endless amounts of screen time to be the depressed, sad Eric, a loner still depressed over the death of his childhood horse (seriously) and spending his days in a remote rehab facility where the regulation clothing color is, for some reason, pastel pink. There, he meets musician Shelly (FKA twigs), who’s also going through some stuff — specifically the fact that some people are trying to kill her. Appealing to her angsty sensibilities, she cracks his tattooed shell, and a smitten, protective Eric returns the favor by busting them both out of the institution.

Their locked-down bliss — it’s like an insufferable audition for “Euphoria” — is cut short when the minions of Shelly’s supernaturally evil benefactor Mr. Roeg (Danny Huston, who else?) catch up with the lovers and kill them both. Eric emerges, however, in an abandoned netherworld in a crow-filled train yard, a grim space where a middle-aged guide (Sami Bouajila) informs Eric that he can rescue Shelly from hell if he returns and unleashes his fury. Big plus for our boy: He can’t be killed. Big minus for us: Zero risks, plus it’ll be more than an hour before any retaliation begins.

By then, when the flat, gray darkness of Steve Annis’s cinematography and Robin Brown’s production design have dulled your senses, you’ll be hungry for stunts and what a samurai sword can do. For queens of carnage, the film’s opera scene probably won’t disappoint (nor will it transcend), but the part where the invincible Eric is supposed to feel pain (something the late Brandon Lee made so palpably human) is an afterthought.

The love story that all this ultraviolence is supposedly generating isn’t anything captivating, and the motive behind Shelly’s murder even less so. For all we know, Eric’s revenge may have as much to do with that horse as it does with Shelly, an underdeveloped character who ultimately will neither help nor hurt Twigs’ brand as a fascinating art scholar. Huston’s prefab villainy won’t suffer, either, though I’m fairly certain that a shot of him closing his eyes (seemingly in a monstrous reverie) is really just an attempt to recall better performances.

The one who should be worried is Skarsgård, a talented actor with an imposing physicality and haunted gaze, but who is still stuck in the star-testing phase of his post-“It” success. With a weak, unimaginative script by Zach Baylin and William Schneider that does him no favors, Skarsgård seems as lost as the pre-reborn Eric, never mustering enough mythic power. Despite the high body count, consider this a “The Crow” murder.