(REVIEW) The 2024 remake of “The Crow” is terrible. But its nonsensical views of heaven and hell are a perfect reflection of contemporary sensibilities. 

If there’s one thing nearly as common as afterlife mythologies, it’s remakes of classic movies. Almost every civilization has had an idea of the afterlife — whether it’s the Greek Underworld, the Norse Valhalla or Christian heaven. Likewise, Hollywood has always remade its classics right from the beginning, from “Ben Hur” to its endless remakes of “A Star is Born” and even “Psycho.”

This year’s “The Crow” is the latest Hollywood remake brought to the screen. Based on the 1994 cult classic starring Brandon Lee (son of the famous Bruce Lee), the new film stars Bill Skarsgard as Eric Draven, who, after home invaders kill him and his girlfriend Shelly Webster, makes a deal with an agent of the afterlife to come back as an indestructible assassin to kill those responsible. 

READ: If You Want Young Men to Leave Christianity, Have Them Watch ‘The Forge’

To put it bluntly, “The Crow” remake is not a good movie. Sitting at a very generous 20% on Rotten Tomatoes (as of Sunday), the film is a baffling mess. The first movie was a simple gothic supernatural tale of revenge that establishes its tone, setting, characters and themes at a solid pace and with a satisfying payoff. The new film establishes no tone, consistent characters or setting, with themes that are all over the place and that make you just wait for it to be over.

What’s far more interesting is comparing how the two films show Hollywood’s treatment of the afterlife reflects where the culture is at both periods of time. 

The 1994 version of “The Crow” is a cosmic justice myth. The opening words of the original say, “People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a great sadness is carried with it and the soul cannot rest. And sometimes — just sometimes — the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.” 

The movie takes place in a city that is overrun with poverty, violence and corruption, like Batman’s Gotham. One of the characters muses, “What this place needs is a good natural catastrophe: earthquake, tornado, you know. Maybe a flood like in the Bible.” What this movie is saying is that we live in a world that needs cosmic justice and that the world of the universe of “The Crow” provides it.

The creator of the original “The Crow” comic knew something about living in a world without justice. A drunk driver killed creator James O’Barr’s fiancee, so he wrote the comic to help bring closure to some of that pain. 

“I thought it’d be a catharsis if I could channel all this anger and frustration onto paper,” O’Barr told the Kansas City Star. “And it turned out the exact opposite. I was narrowing my vision to the point where that was all I could concentrate on, and every page became a little death.” It was only after witnessing the death of “The Crow” film’s star, Brandon Lee — who died before filming was fully completed — that he was able to grieve again, and this time find closure. 

“The Crow,” despite its gothic tone, is rather hopeful. The little girl who narrates the film tells the audience, “A building gets torched. All that is left is ashes. I used to think that was true about everything: families, friends, feelings. But now I know, that sometimes, if love proves real — two people who are meant to be together — nothing can keep them apart.”

Historically, the Christian West has provided that kind of hope and comfort as well. The Judeo-Christian tradition speaks of a final judgment by God who will set the whole world right and a restoration of everything that is good, even if we don’t see it in this life. (For a good summary, check out this breakdown in The Gospel Coalition). But with the cultural revolution of the 1960s, faith in Christianity began to decline. So these comforts became less comforting, which means we needed new myths to comfort our sense of justice. A purely secular world doesn’t satisfy that because everyone knows that not everyone gets justice in this life.

The twist is this post-Christian pagan justice myth is made when the world is growing secular and its stories are told by corporations. “The Crow” was based on a comic book and turned into a Hollywood movie. The movie was not made with the intent that the people who watched it would believe that it was true, but that people would buy tickets to watch it and its sequels. The point of the mythology, therefore, is not that it should be coherent as an explanation of reality, but simply that it should be emotionally satisfying. 

After all, as a belief system, “The Crow” would be obviously false. Nobody’s ever heard of or seen an indestructible vigilante coming back from the dead with a crow and brutally killing those who did an evil deed. And with all the injustice in the world, we would have by now. (There would certainly have been a bunch of reports of that happening to Nazis).  At least Christianity put cosmic justice sometime in the future so it wasn’t so easily falsifiable. 

In 2024, America is even closer to the world of “The Crow” than it was in 1994. According to Pew Research, the share of who don’t identify with any particular religion went from 9% in 1993 to 29% in 2022. But most of these people haven’t become atheists and still consider themselves spiritual in some ways. 

Tara Isabella Burton’s book “Strange Rites” points out that younger people are not truly more secular but more individualized spirituality, getting involved in new age and occult or “spiritual” practices that they can customize to their individual outlooks on the world. This is because, as Dr. Jean Twenge points out in her book “Generations,” the religion of millennials and Generation Z is customizability; their objection to organized religion is not that it’s not true, but that it requires them to conform their beliefs to a larger hierarchy or community. 

This makes today a perfect time for a new version of “The Crow” to reimagine how we see the afterlife in a way that young people could latch on to. But while the movie fits with the modern world in some ways, it doesn’t fit what modern people are looking for from its new metanarratives.

“The Crow” makes a few changes to the original’s lore. In this film, coming back from the dead isn’t a normative part of cosmic justice. It’s a particular deal that Eric makes with the enigmatic heavenly mentor Kronos (who insists he’s not an angel) because the powers that be want to take down the movie’s villain Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston). Vincent made a deal with the devil that he could live forever if he used his magic voice to get innocent people to commit evil acts that sent them to hell. This deal is throwing cosmic balance out of whack, and therefore Eric gets a chance to set things right by killing Vincent. 

This new explanation shifts what was a world where cosmic justice was part of the natural order to cosmic justice being part of an existential bureaucracy. And like all bureaucracies, it makes exceptions to its normal rules when it is convenient. It’s an interesting idea, and it reflects an age where the world is becoming increasingly bureaucratic. (We see this same “heaven as a bureaucracy” trope in movies like Pixar’s “Soul”). 

It also reflects an age that is increasingly skeptical of authority figures and institutions. Modern people see sees institutions all as bureaucracies more interested in maintaining their own power than helping people. (Hence, Kronos will help Eric to “maintain balance” but not out of compassion for his plight). This just brings it up to the cosmic level — as the MCU did with the Eternals and the TVA. (I wrote about how Marvel is projecting our feelings about our institutions into the structure of reality here and here). It also makes “The Crow” fit together with the world we experience more in real life since we don’t have such heroes coming back to earth and doling out justice all the time.

However, while the original “The Crow” may not have made sense in our lived reality, the remake fails to make any sense at all. Why does Eric’s love have to be kept “pure” in order for him to save Shelly? What does “pure love” even mean? Why does having pure love mean never doubting? 

“The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s doubt?” How does that make sense? And why is it Kronos can still send Eric back if he agrees to take her place in hell? These rules are completely arbitrary and never explained. They exist to give us the beats of a story that it wants. Nothing more. 

But “not making sense” is not a turnoff to modern people; in fact, it’s often a bonus. As Brett McCracken discusses in his description of the “metamodern mood,” which permeates our society:

“Metamodernism opposes the “either/or” bifurcation of modernism and postmodernism. It refuses to choose between sincerity/certainty/hope (modernism) and irony/deconstruction/nihilism (postmodernism). It values both, even if — or perhaps precisely because — such a synthesis is, in the end, illogical and incoherent. Metamodernism accepts this incoherence because it values mood and affect (how I’m feeling / what I’m resonating with) more than rigid logic.

If this seems like a ‘have your cake and eat it too’ philosophy, that’s sort of the point. Shaped by the endless, have-it-your-way horizons of the internet (a structural multiverse of innumerable ‘truths’), metamodernism is a worldview as wide open and consumer friendly as the smartphone. Take or leave what you want, follow or unfollow, swipe right or left: it’s your iWorld, so make it a good one.” 

Just like a Hollywood movie crafts its story to make the audience happy, not to teach them the truth, so modern spirituality is crafted for happiness rather than truth. People who believe in astrology are not dissuaded from believing in it, no matter how many scientific studies show that your signs don’t predict your future, because truth was never the reason for believing in it in the first place. It was always the comfort that it brings. 

The reason people dislike the modern spirituality of “The Crow” is because its brand of nonsense doesn’t make them happy. In the original “The Crow,” the film imagines a world where all wrongs are put right, and where lovers who were stripped from each other are reunited in the next life.

The updated version of “The Crow” imagines an unfair world that is run by an equally unfair afterlife, and where the only way to save a loved one is to never see them again. People will accept nonsense if it makes them happy; they will not accept nonsense that makes them unhappy.

The first Christians accepted Christianity because they saw it as both true and beautiful. Modern people reject Christianity because they don’t think it’s beautiful. The ultimate cause of the spectacular failure of the remake of “The Crow” is that it is neither.

Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.