I Watch Films: The Crow: Salvation

 

The Crow: Salvation

Alex Corvis is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Lauren; he maintains his innocence right up until he’s executed. Lightning strikes just as the electric chair is turned on leading to a spectacular and painful death. Later, in the morgue, he’s brought back to life by the crow from The Crow and The Crow: City Of Angels. He escapes the prison and follows the crow to the police station where he looks into the files and discovers the name of a witness, who he knows lied.

Learning that someone has broken into the records, several corrupt police officers realise they need to stop anyone finding out what happened. One has a distinctive scar on his arm, which appeared in the flashbacks and also Alex saw it while being executed. At Lauren’s grave Alex meets Erin, Lauren’s sister, who insists he’s guilty and he vows to prove his innocence and avenge Lauren.

Corvis interrogates the witness, gets names of four police responsible for Lauren’s death (not learning about the fifth). He then goes on a rampage of revenge, discovering the police doing corrupt things, using his invulnerability to terrify and then kill them. The corrupt police realise that someone is after them and start to close down leads, murdering the witness and his wife, breaking into Alex’s lawyer’s office. The reason for Lauren being killed was a corrupt land deal with a mysterious shell company called DERT. When Alex uncovers this Erin realises that company is run by her father and where Lauren learned about it becomes clear.

Things get complicated; as ever in The Crow films the crow takes away the powers. In this case Alex believes he’s completed his revenge when the last of the four police is caught up in an explosion and he sees the dismembered scarred arm. However it turns out the police captain is not only corrupt but likes human taxidermy, captures Erin and Alex and there’s a violent ending with some quite grotesque torture.

These are dark fantasy revenge superhero films, or perhaps they are action horror films. In any case there are many nasty deaths, torture, sexual assault and as I mentioned a character who likes taxidermy (and sews another character’s mouth up). It has a little but not much of the oddness of the first pair.

Watch This: Man returns from the dead to exact bloody revenge
Don’t Watch This: Man returns from the dead to exact bloody revenge