Classic Movie Review : The Crow (1994)
A lot of people on this planet believe they’ve been horribly wronged at some point in their existence. That a great injustice robbed them of their potential. It’s almost never true, but it’s why revenge movies have always and will always be popular. They keep inner fantasies alive. 1994’s festival of Gothness The Crow originally made a great impression on me for this particular reason. I wanted nothing but to come back from the dead, avenge my non-existent fiancée and murder assholes.
Of course, the fact that I was twelve years old when it came out might’ve had something to do with it. So, I rewatched The Crow with Josie this weekend. I had to know whether or not time, internet and maturity killed the melodramatic kid in me.
If you’re unfamiliar with The Crow’s plot, it is quite simple: Rock musician Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his activist fiancée Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas) were beaten, abused and brutally murdered by home invaders on THE NIGHT BEFORE THEIR FUCKING WEDDING. Seriously, how more fucking evil can it get? Their fate is so gruesome that a crow brings back Eric from the dead, so that he can exert revenge. The rest of the movie is just him fucking shit up.
Gothlandia
Nothing whatsoever about The Crow is realistic and therefore it is perfect. It was visibly shot on set, so it doesn’t look like Detroit at all. It’s more like an anonymous alternate reality urban hellscape. If you told me it was set in Gotham City, I would believe you. The buildings are dark, tall and nondescript. Neon signs and fire escapes are protruding like diseases. It’s raining all the goddamn time (Goth movie, remember). Everything about that set is absolute perfection.
Because director Alex Proyas set such a dark and surreal tone with set design (the movie only cost 23 millions to make), it allowed for the narrative to eschew any resemblance to realism. The Crow is a balls out expressonist movie. You take one glance at it and immediately understand that a) whatever happens in this movie is set in an alternate reality urban hellscape and that b) it doesn’t matter because it is technically plausible that young men like Eric Draven exist.
I mean the musician. Not the vengeful ghost.
Unburdened with any connection to reality, The Crow is free to take some wild-ass creative decisions. I haven’t read the James O’Barr graphic novel it is based on, but I think it is fantastic that the villain is named Top Dollar (the immortal Michael Wincott) and that he’s a spoiled trust fund kid weirdo who has sex with his half-sister, collects eyes from people and owns way too many Samurai swords. Because why the fuck not? At least he’s not interested in blowing up the universe.
The agony and the ecstasy of being Eric Draven
In all honesty, The Crow gained a campy charm with age. It’s impossible to take entirely seriously in 2021, but it’s also impossible to look away. Why is Eric Draven’s revenge still so transfixing almost thirty years later? I believe it is because it’s the story of a marginal who’s exempt from any moral responsibility and decides to take on himself to uphold a moral order anyway. That compassion and righteousness are found within and not within any social system whatsoever.
Alright, that shit is also pure edgelord fantasy. It’s human nature to feel misunderstood by society. It’s something we all feel to a certain degree and murdering greedy landlord is not a way to solve anything. But so what? No one is also given a second lease on life by a fucking crow either. I feel like The Crow is so cartoonish and expressionistic that it doesn’t have to be responsible for what it claims. It’s too full of knife-throwing hoodlums and white guys with katanas.
Also, it’s not like Eric Draven is some soulless killing machine. He has a kitten named Gabriel and takes care of a teenage girl (Rochelle Davis) who serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever in the story, she’s a stand-in for what’s left of Eric’s innocence. So, The Crow is not entirely about murder and revenge. It’s a lot about murder and revenge, but it’s also about reestablishing a moral order by combatting greed. By… you know, killing greedy landlords and whatnot.
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There is no films like The Crow anymore. Films who are just films and not epic redefinitions of whatever you first thought was epic. It’s just an expressionistic film with little regard for realism or social responsibility that tries its damnedest to tell a good story in the clearest possible way. My twelve years old melodramatic self isn’t quite dead yet. A crow raised him from the dead and made him live a hundred minutes of badass Goth zombie revenge action. May he live forever (like real love).
