I Watch Films: The Crow

 

The Crow

On Devil’s Night (October 30^th) rock star Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) is thrown from his very cool round window at the top of a block of flats, and killed. His fiancée Shelly is raped and left for dead. Sergeant Albrecht discovers Sarah, a child that Shelly had cared for, comforting her when they realise Shelly will die.

We see the attack later in flashback several times; the reason for Sarah to be out using her skateboard at night is also explained (neglectful drug-addict mother).

A year later Sarah visits Shelly and Eric’s grave, then goes and sees Sergeant Albrecht. A crow visits the grave and Draven rises from it. He goes to the apartment where he has visions of what happened in the attack. The gang had been enforcing evictions that Shelly had been trying to stop. Guided by the crow Draven proceeds to hunt down the gang. Being dead he recovers from wounds, also he's psychically linked to the crow.

He's an undead vigilante, working his way through a gothic city filled with weird characters, none more weird than the members of the gang. Well maybe some are more weird. The city crime boss is Top Dollar, who looks like a slightly over the hill goth-prog-rock star and he has a lover/sister called Myca who has visions. They’re both out of it enough to figure out that something supernatural is going on and maybe act on that.

Brandon Lee was killed in the making of this film, which over shadows it a bit. They didn’t directly use that in the promotion (I’m old enough to remember when this came out) but everyone knew, everyone was talking about it. People claimed the scene he was killed is in it (it isn’t, the film isn’t in such bad taste as to use Lee’s corpse to sell itself). So does it stand up now without all the hype? Moderately well. Draven mopes and poses and does cool spooky stuff. But at various times he also tries to annoy the bad guys and even banter with Sarah and Albrecht. He’s still Draven, and he’s also the avenging crow and he can be both and not reconcile it. It would have been interesting to have addressed this though. Maybe in a sequel.

Watch This: Supernatural goth revenge thriller
Don’t Watch This: Grim, and confusingly inconsistent in tone