Review of The Crow (1994) by Tommy H — 19 Apr 2015

I love this movie. I discovered it a few years after it was released. I was a young teenager at the time and I listened to industrial music. I bought the soundtrack first because it was produced by Trent Reznor, then saw the movie shortly after. I was blown away. The style is incredible. Dark, gritty, ghostly and topped off with a comic book flare. I love how everything is inky black and rain soaked. I love how the apartment buildings seem empty and vague, like the city is a graveyard and the buildings are the tombstones. What makes it more incredible is the tragic death of Brandon Lee in a film that so exemplifies death.

Brandon Lee's performance is very haunting. He's like a sane version of Heath Ledger's Joker. It's not his acting that's great, it's him. He really taps into his charisma and he lets it flow in this movie. It's a beautiful and graceful performance.

And the story is perfect. It's criticized for being too thin, but I think it works. The movie relies heavily on atmosphere and meditative pacing to give the movie its dream-like quality. It's an evenly balanced film. You got all that style, the fantastic original rock music, the iconic character -- there's so much going on already a more complicated plot would distract from the minimalist experience. The sequels went with a more eventful plot and they failed horribly. This movie needed a simple plot. It's like how when you hear so-called real ghost stories, it's not like Poltergeist; instead it's just very small occurrences, like a door slowly closing on its own. The Crow is just a ghost passing through a room before disappearing into the hereafter. It's a ghost story first, an action movie second.