Review of The Crow: Salvation (2000) by Dave W — 27 Jan 2016

The Crow: Salvation is the third installment of The Crow series and is a vast improvement over the second installment, City of Angels. It is also clearly a B movie, but a very good B movie. Though Kirsten Dunst has a prominent role, the budget is clearly low, and what the movie lacks in terms of overall casting, setting, and effects, it makes up for with great performances by key characters, a decent script, and an athletic star who is believable as an unstoppable undead revenge killer.

The movie also explores the concept of The Crow a little bit deeper to imply that coming back from the dead to go on a psychotic killing spree may not be such a great thing because a lot of people end up dead, and all of those people have family members. To that regard, the kill count is well in the double digits.

On top of the number of killings, the level of sadism reaches a new high, as a framed man who dies from electric chair comes back from the dead to take on an entire satanic police force. The electric chair is one of the most frightening ways to die, and I found that this movie used that much better than Wes Craven's horrible disappointment, Shocker.

The villain is also excellent: played by Fred Ward. He seems to really enjoy the role and it shows. In fact, there is a real chemistry between some of the actors. While it is clearly a lessor production with a less stellar cast than the original, I think fans of the first story will be pleasantly surprised by this.