Review: Weighed down by too much muck and not enough myth, a slackly remade ‘The Crow’ flops
The dirty secret of urban hellscape movies drenched in rain and blood is that when it comes down to it, they don’t so much trigger worries about future blight as they do tourism fantasies. (When are theme parks going to figure out that “The Blade Runner Experience” would surely break attendance records?) Alex Proyas’ 1994 fever dream “The Crow,” adapted from James O’Barr’s graphic novel, understood that appeal implicitly, serving up tactile gothic vengeance in a dashed Detroit with the panache of a circus grotesque. But in our current glut of movie dystopias, we’ve gotten away from that kind of immersive showmanship. Case in point, the dreary, pedestrian and ho-hum retelling of O’Barr’s story, also called “The Crow,” this time directed by Rupert Sanders. It’s like an anti-entertainment protest. This time around, the wraithlike Bill Skarsgård is our back-from-the-dead avenger. But before he gets to ring his eyes with black paint for a slaydate with crow-powered destiny, he’s given an interminable amount of screen time to be broken, glum Eric, a loner still depressed about the death of his childhood horse (seriously) and whiling away