Review #349: The Crow (1994)
October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #22 - The Crow (1994)
So, I'm stretching things a bit by calling this a horror film; originally I had a different movie in mind for Devil's Night but I couldn't find a free version of it anywhere so my wife suggested I just watch this instead. I'd only ever seen The Crow once before, about fifteen years ago, so it seemed like it was worth revisiting!
The Crow follows a man named Eric Draven, who is killed after witnessing his fiancee being sexually assaulted and eventually killed the night before their wedding. A year later, Draven is reborn as some kind of a supernatural spirit of vengeance, and he goes on a rampage, methodically tracking down and killing all of the people responsible for his death. This film is the final acting role of its star, Brandon Lee, who was accidentally killed while filming (more on that at the end).
First let me just take a moment and talk about Devil's Night as a holiday, since it acts as an ever-present backdrop for the story of this film. This movie ostensibly takes place in Detroit on October 30th (being a Detroiter myself, this is particularly funny, as the city in the movie looks nothing like Detroit) which I guess makes sense because Devil's Night only ever really existed in and around Detroit. I remember it being a big deal when I was a kid, and even in this movie they make comments about how there were "143 fires so far" and "they must be slacking off from last year". But even in Detroit I feel like Devil's Night stopped being a thing at some point? (When I was a kid people started calling it "Angel's Night" to try and remove the association with crime. I remember a bookstore on my walk to school having a big mural that said "Angel's Night- Neighbors Unite" or something like that.) According to Wikipedia arson was still an unusually common occurrence on October 30th, with potentially 24 incidents of arson on Devil's Night as recently as 2015. But outside of Detroit I doubt many people have even heard of it.
Anyway, the movie is... alright. It's a fun time capsule of the type of music and fashion that was in vogue in the early 90s, and although I didn't see this movie myself for many years I definitely know how much this influenced pop culture. The Crow was a goth icon, and the story of revenge after the brutal slaying of Draven and his future wife is surely something that many a goth teen dreamed about while putting on their black eyeliner or whatever. (A little sidenote- for some reason I spent all these years thinking that Draven's black and white clown face was just what his face looked like? But no, canonically the character is wearing makeup. That makes it seem... I dunno, a little silly.)
But apart from the quaint look and feel of this movie, I'm sorry to say I don't think it holds up nearly as much as I expected. The dialogue is all VERY cheesy, and I feel like all of the performances- not the least of which being Brandon Lee in the starring role- are hammed up so much it's hard to take them seriously. (In Lee's case I know he was still pretty young and early in his career, so surely he would have gotten better if given the chance, but his acting in here just isn't anything special.) It's impressive that they were able to finish the movie after his untimely passing, and I think this movie deserves a lot of credit for some of the imagery and theming and lore that has surely influenced countless pieces of media since, but on its own I just don't think it's that great. I've seen far worse films but I probably won't be rewatching this anytime soon, and I can't imagine any of the sequels are worth checking out. (Please, someone let me know if The Crow: Salvation is your favorite movie.) I'm just now realizing that there was even a 2024 remake, but the fact that I'm just now finding out about it says volumes about whether it was good or not!
To reiterate, I think this movie does some cool things. There's some really interesting scenes, and the story is compelling and made a big impact on me even before I had ever seen the film, just through hearing about it on the schoolyard. But I think this one sags a bit under the weight of its legacy and unfortunately doesn't hold up like maybe it should.
Overall Rating: 6/10 Engagement Rings Fired from a Shotgun
Tragic Story: This is one of those bits of pop culture trivia I feel like everyone has heard, but just in case you haven't, let me detail it here. While filming one of the scenes of the movie, a revolver had been loaded with prop bullets (bullets that were mostly real but had no gunpowder in them) so that the bullets would be visible on-screen. At some point during that scene's filming, the trigger for the revolver got pulled, which didn't actually fire the bullets (like I said, there was no gunpowder) but it caused one of them to get lodged in the barrel of the gun. This film cut a lot of corners to reduce costs, so the person in charge of checking and cleaning the guns had been sent home early; as a result, several days passed without anyone realizing that this revolver had an actual bullet lodged in the barrel. So when the time came to film another scene where Brandon Lee's character is shot, the revolver was loaded with blanks. The actor holding the gun, Michael Massee, made the mistake of actually pointing the gun directly at Lee (something they would normally be urged not to do, since the camera can't tell most of the time)- and when he pulled the trigger, the blank propelled the bullet from the barrel into Brandon Lee's chest. He died in the hospital a few hours later.
The thing about this story is that it's not just one person's mistake; EVERYONE involved had a hand in the tragic event. Allegedly, the cameras were rolling when the fatal shot took place, but the director immediately exposed the film, destroying it. Michael Massee took a year off after this to figure out whether he wanted to keep acting or not. The film was able to finish production- several scenes were cut or altered to edit around what they had, and some shots were filmed with a body double and digitally composited to put Lee's face on the double's body. This was an impressive feat, and even knowing about this tragedy, I wasn't able to spot anything amiss on my viewing. But quite possibly the biggest tragedy in my opinion, is that similar to how Eric Draven was killed right before his wedding, Brandon Lee was set to marry a few weeks after filming wrapped as well. It's truly a sad story, if a bit ironic.
Comments
Post a Comment