Bill Skarsgård is an inked-up, goth angel of death in Rupert Sanders’ dreary new spin on “The Crow,” here an adaptation of James O’Barr’s supernatural graphic novel series rather than a retread of Alex Proyas’ controversial 1994 cult favorite. (That Proyas’ version remains a film maudit is an understatement, as star Brandon Lee was killed by a prop gun during a production completed in his honor with special effects and a stunt double.) Written by Zach Baylin and William Schneider, this version of “ The Crow ” wisely banned real guns from the set, even though it’s filled with plenty of stylized ballistic killings and led by an undead Eric Draven (Skarsgård, in the Lee role) avenging the brutal death of his girlfriend (FKA Twigs, real name Tahliah Barnett).
Despite moody, doomy set design and Skarsgård’s ominous silhouette as a very tall and beautiful walking corpse, Sanders’ “The Crow” is less giving with plot, hampered by an unfleshed and often confusing mythology that leaves the unsettling particulars of O’Barr’s source material for dead. Setting up Eric as a traumatized Freudian headcase haunted by a hardscrabble childhood somewhere in Michigan, “The Crow” opens gruesomely on a dying horse impaled by barbed wire, a young Eric (Solo Uniacke) unable to save the animal or a deadbeat mother at home. That’s about as deep an exploration into his past as this movie goes, flashing forward to his adulthood, where unspecified demon-driven a.