CinemaSerf
Aug 29, 2024
6/10
I think the best plan of attack for this film is to forget all about Brandon Lee's 1994 version and treat this as a stand-alone vehicle for Bill Skarsgård to show off his ninja skills. He's "Eric" who encounters "Shellly" (FKA twigs) and is then promptly embroiled in the devilish machinations of "Roeg" (Danny Huston) who ensures that his hench-woman "Marion" (Laura Birn) kills them both. Turns out, though, that "Eric" still has enough purity of soul left to return to the land of the living and so long as he is touched by true love's kiss sort of thing, will remain immortal long enough to avenge the couple. Yes, there is a crow - the embodiment of his spirit when he goes on his murderous spree, but that whole theme isn't at all developed so let's just forget about that and revert to the whole point of the film - an excuse to pack loads of slaughter, acrobatics and dark, eerie photography into all but two hours of repetitious mediocrity. The camera likes Skarsgård well enough, and there's certainly plenty of him to see here as he takes on all comers. Why were they killed though? Who is "Roeg"? Sure, you can put your own interpretation onto the story if you can be bothered, but director Rupert Sanders has almost entirely focussed on the gloomy and very wet imagery and decided against putting any meat on the bones of the story or the characters. There's a welcome paucity of dialogue throughout and FKA clearly twigged there wasn't much for her to do here so leaves much of the film to her co-star trying his best to be an amalgam of "John Wick" and "Selene" from "Underworld" (2003). It does look good but hasn't an original feather in it's body. It's nice to see Josette Simon (remember "Blake's Seven"?) on the big screen, albeit briefly, but this is really all very disappointing.
