Colman Domingo in ‘Dead Man’s Wire.’ Photo: Row K Entertainment.
For his first feature in six years, director Gus Van Sant has picked a familiar pattern –– a true-life tale. And ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ certainly boasts a compelling hook. A kidnapping case that was locally infamous in Indiana that briefly attracted national attention in the late 1970s.
But with some odd tonal choices, the movie doesn’t always do justice to what is a fascinating tale of desperation and candor.
Script and Direction
(L to R) Al Pacino and director Gus Van Sant attend Row K’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ Los Angeles Premiere at The Grove AMC on January 7, 2026 in Los Angeles.
The script from Austin Kolodney (a filmmaker behind various shorts and who has worked in a number of roles on different movies) takes a mostly real-time approach to the story of Tony Kiritsis and his grudge against a local mortgage company.
It’s a solid foundation for an entertaining movie, and one that director Gus Van Sant knows how to make well. Yet the issue is with some of the stylistic tricks and the occasional shifts in tone that don’t always work with the plot itself and undercut the power.
Cast and Performances
Cary Elwes in ‘Dead Man’s Wire.’ Photo: Row K Entertainment.
The cast is the definite highlight of the movie, with Skarsgård, for once not buried beneath a mountain of prosthetics, giving a memorable, charismatic performance as the desperate, but perhaps misguided central figure.
Dacre Montgomery also has a chance to shine as the victim of the kidnapping, a man whose rich family is only to willing to throw him under the bus when it comes to negotiating with his captor.
Outside of the main pair, Cary Elwes is excellent as a detective, Al Pacino steals a couple of scenes as Montgomery’s character’s father, and Myha’la gets some good moments as a reporter who is first to report on the developing situation.
Final Thoughts
Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis in ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. Photo: Row K Entertainment.
Despite its occasional overreliance on stylistic tics, ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ is a compelling treatment of a real-life case, one that has resonances even today.
‘Dead Man’s Wire’ receives 70 out of 100.
(L to R): Dacre Montgomery and Bill Skarsgard in ‘Dead Man’s Wire.’ Photo: Row K Entertainment.
What is the plot of ‘Dead Man’s Wire’?
The film is inspired by the 1977 Indianapolis hostage standoff involving Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) and centers on the escalation of a public confrontation shaped by negotiation, media attention, and law enforcement response.
(L to R) Kelly Lynch, director Gus Van Sant, Al Pacino and Colman Domingo attend Row K’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ Los Angeles Premiere at The Grove AMC on January 7, 2026 in Los Angeles.
Set in 1977 and based on a true story, ‘Dead Man’s Wire‘ follows Tony Kiritsis, a former real estate developer who puts a dead man’s switch on himself and the mortgage banker who did him wrong, while demanding $5 million and a personal apology.
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Moviefone was in attendance at a recent press conference, in which director Gus Van Sant and writer Austin Kolodney shared behind-the-scenes details and discuss adapting a true story for the screen.
1) Gus Van Sant Was Interested In ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ Because It Was Going To Be Filmed Almost Immediately
(L to R) Dacre Montgomery as Richard ‘Dick’ Hall and Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis in ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. Photo: Row K Entertainment
When asked about what drew him to the project, Gus Van Sant shockingly explains that it mostly had to do with the shooting timeline.
Gus Van Sant: I joined on with the knowledge that it was shooting in Louisville, Kentucky. And it was shooting very quickly. This was September of last year, and Cassian Elwes, the producer, was planning to shoot in November. I was intrigued by the whole situation of having to do something right away and not even knowing what it was about. Kind of… I didn’t really say yes. I did read the script before I said yes.
2) Austin Kolodney First Heard About Tony Karitsis On A Podcast
Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis in ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. Photo: Row K Entertainment.
Writer Austin Kolodney first heard about this true story on a podcast and wondered to himself why it wasn’t a movie. So he wrote a script.
Austin Kolodney: I first heard it mentioned on a podcast. A producer, Jamie Vernon, had mentioned the name and the crime, and I had my antenna up. This is the height of COVID in 2020, during that summer. And I was actively looking for something to write. I had written a couple other features, like smaller indie things that I would want to direct, but I was like, I need to try and get something made soon to pay off credit card debt, get the career started, I can’t just keep Lyft driving. So, I was actively looking for something that I think would be a movie, and when I heard about Tony, went down this rabbit hole, some podcasts, there’s a great dollop episode about him, and then there’s this one YouTube video that I used as a hyperlink, because it had this 5-minute summation of this really grainy texture, archival footage shot, highlight reel ofTony slipping on the ice, and cracking jokes at the cops, and laughing at them, and getting them to laugh with him, and then asking for water, and having to hold the gun and drink it like a baby bird, and for some reason that crystallized the movie for me. I’m like, how has this not been made into a movie? So I started developing it as a movie.
3) Austin Kolodney Included Hyperlinks To Videos In His Initial Script
(L to R) Dacre Montgomery as Richard ‘Dick’ Hall and Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis in ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. Photo: Row K Entertainment
Gus Van Sant says that Austin Kolodney’s inclusion of hyperlinks in the script helped him to understand who Tony Karitsis really was.
Gus Van Sant: You could see very clearly the guy, Tony Karitsis’ personality, partly due to the hyperlinks that were connected in the script to his actual voice. You could hear the real guy, who was very intriguing, and so within just a few moments, I don’t know that I wasn’t conscious of I guess it was obvious that he was a desperate underdog character that resembled other characters that I’d done before.
4) Austin Kolodney Is Drawn To True Crime, But He Doesn’t Want To Be Pigeonholed In That Genre
Cary Elwes as Michael Grable in ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. Photo: Row K Entertainment
When asked about what it was that truly interested him about this story, Austin Kolodney admits that he loves true crime, but that he also has the ability to write other genres.
Austin Kolodney: I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t like a good crime movie. A lot of great American films are crime movies, and I don’t know if true crime is necessarily how I want to corner myself as a storyteller. I’ve had a couple other scripts written prior to this one that aren’t at all in this realm. I continue to see, I guess, any article or book or footage of a true event that has a character that is very rich and very textured and feels like someone that I would want to see on the screen for an hour and a half, two hours. That’s what draws me to it. It’s more the person, the criminal, I guess, not necessarily the act of crime, it’s the personality and the three-dimensionality of the person that’s at the center of it, is what draws me to a story.
5) Bill Skarsgård Almost Wasn’t The Lead Of ‘Dead Man’s Wire’
(L to R) Dacre Montgomery and Bill Skarsgard in ‘Dead Man’s Wire.’ Photo: Row K Entertainment.
Director Gus Van Sant admits that he thought Bill Skarsgård was great for the lead role of ‘Dead Man’s Wire’, but details how he almost didn’t take the role.
Gus Van Sant: I had tried to get Bill in another film that was simultaneous. It was canceled right about the same time that I was joining onto ‘Dead Man’s Wire’, and I had asked him to play a smaller part, and he said it would be interesting if he wasn’t playing a lead somewhere else. So I was thinking of him for a while, just working with him, and putting him into things where he wasn’t even the lead character. I hadn’t worked with him. In this case, he seemed to work for the lead character. So I turned around and said, oh, there’s a lead character on this one. He was busy. So he was fitting it in between projects. But yeah, he seemed to be game. I mean, partly, maybe because I worked with his dad, Stellan (Skarsgård) in ‘Good Will Hunting‘. He had actually come to the set, but he was like 7 years old. There’s a picture I have of him and the big family that was visiting Stellan.
Al Pacino as M/L/ Hall in ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. Photo: Row K Entertainment
What is the plot of ‘Dead Man’s Wire’?
The film is inspired by the 1977 Indianapolis hostage standoff involving Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) and centers on the escalation of a public confrontation shaped by negotiation, media attention, and law enforcement response.
(L to R) Al Pacino and director Gus Van Sant attend Row K’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ Los Angeles Premiere at The Grove AMC on January 7, 2026 in Los Angeles.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with iconic filmmaker Gus Van Sant about his work on ‘Dead Man’s Wire’, his first reaction to the unusual screenplay, creating the specific look of the film, casting Bill Skarsgård, directing the legendary Al Pacino, and the importance of the music in the movie.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Van Sant, Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes and Myha’la.
Moviefone: To begin with, I understand that the script came with links to actual news footage from the true story that the movie is based on. Can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay and how the real footage helped you envision how you wanted to make this film?
Gus Van Sant: Yeah, there were actual links to footage, which had been posted to YouTube. You could hear the real Tony Kiritsis talking to the police for the first time when he was in the middle of kidnapping his mortgage broker in 1977. Then there was also the footage of them walking across town with the dead man’s wire rig attached to his captive and the police following them, and the drive to his house in the police car that he commandeers. All these things were peppered throughout the script so you could get a very strong sense of the event, the demands, and the final Press conference that they have was also in the hyperlinks. I mean, it helped just envision what you thought of the actual event. You know, it was complete, true footage of the actual event. So, from there, you had a lot of information. It helped me visually because it was set in the ‘70s and all the little parts of the visuals were in some of the footage that was part of the script. You could see the real people, the real police, the real Indianapolis locations, the real cars that they were driving and the real apartment exterior, not the interior of the apartment. But that was the atmosphere you could see. It just affected everything about bringing it to life for us in Louisville, Kentucky, which wasn’t Indianapolis (where the true story took place).
(L to R) Dacre Montgomery as Richard ‘Dick’ Hall and Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis in ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. Photo: Row K Entertainment.
MF: The film itself looks like a movie that would have been released in the 1970s, at the time that the story takes place. Can you talk about how you achieved that specific look?
GVS: It was all the different departments working together. Our production designer, our costumer and whoever else was involved in the look, the DP, his crew, the lighting personnel, they were all queuing off photographs of the period. In my case, I was I was glued to photography by William Eggleston, who shot photographs in Memphis, Tennessee, which is nearby. I mean, part of that Midwest feel and the colors within that, and our DP, was interested in the movie ‘Klute’. Visually, he thought it had a lot to do with what we wanted to be doing. The original photography that was in the documentaries had a greenish color to it, which was interesting, that we liked. We were trying to keep away from maybe things we’d seen that resemble the ‘70s, which are browns that I felt weren’t really representing the ‘70s well, because there was a lot of color back there. I mean, it just all came together, everyone together in unison, not really knowing, because you’re always striving to have this fantastic result and hopefully you get there, but we’re always working in the dark, sort of.
Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis in ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. Photo: Row K Entertainment.
MF: Can you talk about casting Bill Skarsgård and what he brought to the role of Tony Kiritsis?
GVS: Bill was, to me, sort of a man of a thousand faces. He had done roles that sometimes were very similar, like “The Crow’ or he was in ‘Boy Kills World’, which was possibly a similar character, yet quite different. He made them quite different. His performance in ‘It’ was a big one. He showed me some things that he had done in Europe that weren’t as extreme characters and more like him being almost himself, that I got to see, which I hadn’t seen. He seemed like the guy for a job like this. Like, almost in, I want to say, a Peter Sellers way. He could transform himself.
Al Pacino in ‘Dead Man’s Wire.’ Photo: Row K Entertainment.
MF: What was your experience like directing the legendary Al Pacino? Had you ever met him before working with him on this project?
GVS: I hadn’t met him. I had seen him at a party, but I hadn’t ever met him and spoke to him before. He had done a film with Harmony Korine, where Harmony was playing a character in a smaller project that Al was the lead in and he was working in a junk shop, I think. Our first meeting was really on the phone talking about the whole story and the part his character played in it, and he had a desire to make it a little bigger, which we attempted to do. Austin (Kolodney) wrote some extra stuff. We did do rehearsals with Al and Dacre and Bill together for the phone calls. It was all quite exciting because when Bill’s in character he’s quite crazy and wild. So, it affected Al. He realized, “Oh, we’re in the real thing now.” Which he’s of course used to, but these guys could deliver it. So, working with him was great. I mean, it was fast. We had one day to shoot all his scenes, but it was a lot of fun.
Colman Domingo in ‘Dead Man’s Wire.’ Photo: Row K Entertainment.
MF: Finally, music plays an important role in this movie, as it does in all your films. Can you talk about your musical choices, and mixing specific songs from the period with contemporary music?
GVS: The DJ concept was very interesting because I felt like I had listened to the radio in the ‘60s, not ‘70s, but it was a very important New York area experience, where the counterculture of the ‘60s was present in the DJs. So, they were on your side, and they were playing, now it’s classic rock, but at the time it was like extended rock and roll. So, you’d have songs that were like 10 minutes long with guitar solos and so forth. Because Colman Domingo was able to play the part, there was a DJ that I really liked on WNEW in New York named Rosko (William Roscoe Mercer). You can find his shows on YouTube today. So, I sent some of those shows to Colman and he was playing songs that were backgrounds to poetry that he would read over the songs. The poetry was mostly about the Vietnam War and about gladiators and the trials of that period. They were very emotional, very dramatic and very political. So, we used Colman’s character to have that vibe and have that idea, as opposed to the reality of the real DJ, who was more of a newscaster. So, we kind of took liberty with that character to give him color, and to give the DJ more of a voice in the whole thing, because he does end up brokering the whole story.
(L to R) Dacre Montgomery and Bill Skarsgard in ‘Dead Man’s Wire.’ Photo: Row K Entertainment.
What is the plot of ‘Dead Man’s Wire’?
The film is inspired by the 1977 Indianapolis hostage standoff involving Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) and centers on the escalation of a public confrontation shaped by negotiation, media attention, and law enforcement response.
Bill Skarsgård in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’. Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO.
Arriving on HBO Max on October 22 with its first episode is ‘IT: Welcome to Derry,’ which turns the clock back to 1962 so as to explore more of the dark history of the titular town and the equally titular presence, who feeds on fear and terrorizes the locals.
(L to R): Mikkal Karim-Fidler, Clara Stack and Jack Molloy Legault in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’. Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO.
While prequels have been around for years, it feels like we’ve been besieged by them in recent years, especially as studios and TV networks seek to find new ways to explore established franchises.
It’s a tough tightrope to walk –– audiences can tire of learning too much about certain characters (‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ is an example), while lazy storytelling can creep in. But refreshingly, ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ is a worthwhile addition to the canon of a story that began with Stephen King’s 1986 novel and has been most famously adapted into two big screen outings.
Script and Direction
Chris Chalk in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’. Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO.
‘Welcome to Derry’, thanks to the presence of some of the filmmaking team, faithfully connects to the movies without too many overt references. The show’s plotline and characters are smartly drawn, offering layered approaches to a variety of stories, not the least of which is Taylour Paige and Jovan Adepo as Charlotte and Leroy Hanlon, the latter of whom links the townsfolk with the nearby army base and the military’s attempts to learn more about its dark secret.
Andy Muschietti, who directed both the more recent movies, gives the show its own signature blend of everyday life and gory, bone-chilling scares.
Cast and Performances
Taylour Paige in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’. Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO.
It’s kudos to both the creators and the rest of the cast that the series doesn’t lean on Skarsgård’s creep-tastic Pennywise to generate its scares, at least not in his actual clown form. Paige and Adepo are both great, but the real winners are among the younger cast (including Amanda Christine and Clara Stack, who offer naturalistic work in the face of some truly terrifying set pieces.
Final Thoughts
Blake Cameron James in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’. Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO.
‘Welcome to Derry’ proves to be that rare prequel that works to enhance what has gone before, and finds interesting angles to peek into beyond even Stephen King’s source work.
Kicking off just before Halloween, it’s ideal creepy viewing for a fall evening.
‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ receives 82 out of 100.
Kimberly Guerrero in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’. Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO.
What’s the plot of ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’?
The show is set in 1962, 27 years before the events of ‘IT: Chapter One’ (which updated the book’s 1957 setting to 1988). The show dives into the lore of Pennywise and the town’s horrific history, drawing heavily from the “interludes” in King’s original novel — the eerie flashbacks and historical tragedies Mike Hanlon researched as an adult.
Nicholas Galitzine and Bill Skarsgård are aboard ‘Mosquito Bowl.’
Director Peter Berg wrote the movie with Mark L. Smith.
It adapts a based-on-truth tome by Buzz Bissinger.
Director Peter Berg seems to be on something of a winning streak in his deal with Netflix of late.
He directed limited series ‘Painkiller,’ which spent five weeks in the Global Top 10 TV List (English), garnering 29.1 million views. And more recently, ‘American Primeval’ was on the same list for four weeks, racking up 35.1 million views following its debut in January.
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Now, via Deadline, the first project from the renewed contract is in the works, with Nicholas Galitzine and Bill Skarsgård attached to star in ‘Mosquito Bowl,’ which finds him in true-story territory (and sports, something which he’s done well with in the past).
Bill Skarsgård in the Horror/Thriller film ‘Locked’, a The Avenue release. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
The new movie is based on Buzz Bissinger’s New York Times bestseller ‘The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II.’
The film is set after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when four of America’s top college football stars set their fame aside to enlist in the Marines.
As they prepare for the brutal invasion of Okinawa, they take part in a legendary game featuring some of the greatest players in history –– a game that, for many, will be the last they ever play.
We don’t yet know what roles Galitzine and Skarsgård are playing, but we can see them as two of the gridiron stars.
Berg is working once again with ‘The Revenant’ writer Mark L. Smith on the movie, continuing their partnership after collaborating on ‘American Primeval.’ We predict this one, while it doesn’t exactly have a happy ending (see: World War II and survival rates), should at least be slightly more positive than the hard-bitten frontier series.
And that’s not the only reunion here –– ‘Mosquito Bowl’ sees Berg back partnering with Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, who backed on the hit football movie ‘Friday Night Lights’ (which perhaps not-so-coincidentally was also based on a Bissinger tome) and the series take that followed. The pair are developing a reboot of the latter.
His big new role is leading Amazon’s new take on ‘Masters of the Universe,’ which is in production now and will be on screens on June 5th, 2026.
In addition to that, he’s part of the cast for mystery drama ‘Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Movie,’ which was also touted at Amazon’s recent CinemaCon presentation, the indie movie ‘100 Nights of Hero’ and has lent his voice to animated pic ‘Wings of Freedom.’
What else has Bill Skarsgård worked on?
Bill Skarsgård in ‘The Crow.’ Photo Credit: Larry Horricks for Lionsgate.
Skarsgård, who has become something of a chameleon when it comes to roles, most recently put his skills on display in Robert Eggers’ Oscar-nominated ‘Nosferatu,’ which became Focus Features’ second highest-grossing film ever at the domestic box office following its Christmas Day debut.
There’s also historical drama ‘Emperor,’ Lee Tamahori’s movie about young Johanna “Of Ghent”, who seeks revenge on the holy Roman Emperor Charles V for the death of her father.
Director Peter Berg. Photo: Daniel McFadden/Netflix.
Berg has recently worked on a documentary about music superstar Rihanna.
In addition to his own directorial gigs, Berg is a consistently busy producer, supporting other people’s work. He’s behind new TV series ‘Green Beret’s Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse’ and two movies.
‘The Beast’ stars Samuel L. Jackson and Joel Kinnaman in the story of the US President needing to rely on the defensive capabilities of his titular, tricked-out, secure main transport car when a militia of unidentified hostiles coordinates a coup against the U.S. That one has Renny Harlin in the director’s driving seat.
There’s also the in-development ‘Olympus,’ about a decorated soldier turned spy who finds out he is descended from the Greek Gods and could actually be humanity’s last hope. The movie appears to be in development limbo, but does feature a script from prolific TV creator Taylor Sheridan.
When will ‘Mosquito Bowl’ be on screens?
Netflix has yet to announce when the movie might hit its servers, but given that it has reached the casting stage, we’d be shocked if it wasn’t ready for release next year.
(L to R) Linda Fiorentino and Peter Berg in ‘The Last Seduction’. Photo: October Films.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with director David Yarovesky about his work on ‘Locked’, how he came to direct the project, the Argentinian film it is based on, other inspirations, practical aspects of the story, and working with Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins on set.
Anthony Hopkins in the Horror/Thriller film ‘Locked’, a The Avenue release. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
Moviefone: To begin with, how did this project land in your lap?
David Yarovesky: I just made a movie with Sam Raimi called ‘Nightbooks,’ and it was just a really great experience. So he sent me this script, which was not a kind of thing I’d ever done before. But Sam’s sending me a script, so I’m in, right? I’m going to do anything to work with Sam, but I had to kind of get my brain around how I’m going to take this on. The more I started digging in, the more I was like, “It feels like something I’ve seen before, but I’ve really never seen this before.” I couldn’t find a comp. So I started to pull on that thread and go, “Okay, you’ve got a guy trapped somewhere — what are things that are tropes for this subgenre?” I started to think about those tropes that we see over and over again, and I said, “Okay, one of the things is that you’re trapped in a little space.” So shooting it is very tricky. Oftentimes the cinematography is very simplistic and you’re really limited in shooting. So one of the things I wanted to do with this was really break that open and shoot this as a big cinematic movie and try to capture something that the people haven’t seen before.
MF: Did you see ‘4×4,’ the Argentinian film that this is based on?
DY: Immediately after reading the script, the next thing I did was watch ‘4×4.’ I loved it. I thought it was just so well done, super unique obviously. I had never seen something quite done like this before. I watched that movie one time and then I was like, “I don’t want to see this again,” because I love seeing remakes or reboots or adaptations where I can say, “Okay, this was their interpretation, and now we brought a new filmmaker in, and this is a totally different voice coming into this, and it feels totally different.” So my aim was to do that with this movie, to go in with the most respect and admiration for the original team that made this and did an incredible job with it, but take a crack at telling the story and see how my story ends up going down different paths than their story. I guess that was part of what had inspired me.
Anthony Hopkins in the Horror/Thriller film ‘Locked’, a The Avenue release. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
MF: Did you look at films like ‘Buried,’ which come at the same problem (shooting in a small space) from different angles?
DY: I had actually seen ‘Buried’ a couple of times over the years, but I rewatched it for this. I love ‘Buried.’ I think ‘Buried’ is incredible, but I mean, they’re very trapped in there. They’re very contained. Then ‘Phone Booth,’ of course. All these movies were clear inspirations, but this is ‘Phone Booth’ or ‘Buried’ in ‘Christine,’ so it takes it to a different place. This movie has a foot in the elevated thriller space, and it has a foot in the genre space. I think it’s because it’s so experiential — at times, Eddie’s terrified, so it can feel like a horror movie to a degree. I also think oftentimes movies like this can become a series of puzzles and traps to solve that are heightened and not believable. I love that stuff, but I wanted to ground this movie in reality, and I wanted to just sort of explore, “Okay, if a guy wanted to build a trap car and capture someone and really take revenge, what would that really look like?”
MF: How plausible was it in terms of what the car was able to do, and what William was able to control remotely? Did you have things that you wanted to try that weren’t possible?
DY: I’m not actually a car person at all. I am not a big car guy. I don’t know the new car stuff or whatever. But when I took on this movie, obviously I had to learn a lot about cars and car manufacturing and building and design. In that process I really came to sort of love cars in a way and get pulled into it. Now I find myself driving around going like, “Oh, that’s the new thing. Oh yeah, I like what they did with this.” So after doing many deep dives, I found that there were a number of companies that will modify cars, like an Escalade or whatever, to be armored in a number of different ways. The sky’s the limit. There’s like multi-million-dollar cars that are made to transport princes and kings and stuff. I tried to follow every painstaking detail of it. I’ll give you an example of that, something that probably you saw and didn’t notice. In the trailer, there’s a moment where Anthony Hopkins’ character is standing outside and the window lowers and he says something. But if you look at the window, it’s layers and layers and layers of window, because the armored glass is that thick. I’ve not heard one person mention that they saw that, but we went through that painstaking process to make sure that detail was in there for people. We did a lot of research and I really wanted to keep it all within the boundaries of what is realistic and believable for right now, and in doing that, we really followed that to a very intense degree. We did our absolute best to try to recreate what that would be like, how you would achieve it, and so on.
Bill Skarsgård in the Horror/Thriller film ‘Locked’, a The Avenue release. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
MF: Can you talk about working with both Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins?
DY: You’re talking about two of the greatest living actors today. Both of them are playing these intense roles and bringing their A-game. When the two of them met, they met on set. I didn’t want them to meet before. I wanted to be like, “Hey, nice to meet you. Get in the car. We’re doing it now.” I parked the SUV under a bridge and we did the movie like a play, with Anthony Hopkins calling into the car and Bill there. The day they met, they walked up to each other and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was almost like a weigh-in at a boxing match. The two of them were just standing and looking at each other, and they just start grinning at each other and staring into each other’s eyes like they were about to have this cage match, and it went on for, I don’t know, 20 seconds or something. They were just staring at each other, sizing each other up. I’d never quite seen anything like it before. Then obviously we jumped right into it, and they just went for it. It was so wild to see. I really feel like we captured a little bit of magic that day. I think the entire crew really felt it. There were these texts that were going around that people were just like, “I can’t believe I’m watching this happen. It’s Hannibal versus Pennywise and blah, blah, blah.” It felt like a really special thing that was happening.
MF: Did you shoot it that way too, with Anthony Hopkins calling into the car?
DY: No, no, no. We couldn’t shoot it that way, but we rehearsed it that way so that we could create these moments that felt really naturalistic. Then we did a whole recording pass so that we could get the best performance possible from Bill. Sometimes we used Anthony Hopkins’ voice, sometimes it was me, so that there could be an interactivity. Sometimes it was the first AD — whatever that moment needed to make it feel alive. Then we replaced all of it again. Anthony Hopkins came back in, and we re-recorded all of it to keep it alive really, to keep that sort of naturalistic thing happening.
Anthony Hopkins in the Horror/Thriller film ‘Locked’, a The Avenue release. Photo courtesy of The Avenue.
MF: Finally, did either of them add any bits of business that wasn’t in the script, just to flesh out their characters a bit more?
DY: I went to breakfast with Anthony Hopkins before he signed onto the movie, and he told me how much he loved the script. Shout out to Michael Arlen Ross, the writer, who was totally responsible for that, and also the original filmmakers who made a great movie. We started talking about the character, and he would just become William, and he would talk to me like I’m Eddie. We started talking about our lives, and we started talking about our relationships with our families and morality and the human capacity to do evil. We just start going down all these really deep paths, and through that, we started to shape this character. Then Anthony Hopkins would call me almost every night for a long time, and we would talk through aspects of the character, aspects of how he felt, what he thought, and then he would talk to me again like I was Eddie. Through that, he would give me ideas that we would put into the script and we created this thing together. I really wanted to shape it around who he was and where this was going. It was a really organic process, but I think in order to create that sort of naturalistic feeling of the movie, I think it needed to be organic.
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What is the plot of ‘Locked’?
A petty criminal named Eddie (Bill Skarsgård), desperate for money so he can take care of his daughter, breaks into an SUV but finds himself locked in the heavily fortified, trap-laden vehicle by its owner, William (Anthony Hopkins), who torments Eddie via remote control as part of his own twisted plan for vengeance.
(Left) Bill Skarsgård in ‘Boy Kills World’. Photo: Lionsgate. (Right) Murray Bartlett in ‘The Last of Us’. Photo: Liane Hentscher/HBO.
Preview:
Bill Skarsgård, Murray Bartlett and Noah Jupe are joining ‘The Death of Robin Hood.’
Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer will star.
‘A Quiet Place: Day One’s director Michael Sarnoski is overseeing the movie.
Movies and TV just can’t stay away from the British legend of Robin Hood –– the folk hero figure known for stealing from the rich to help the poor –– and you’d think that everything anyone would ever want to say about the character has already been covered.
Crafted by Sarnoski before he even got the gig making the ‘Quiet Place’ prequel, the script is moving forward, and the director has already recruited Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer to star.
The film will see the title character grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder, a battleworn loner who finds himself gravely injured and in the hands of a mysterious woman who offers him a chance at salvation.
Jackman, of course, will be Hood (in shades of his battered, older Wolverine in ‘Logan’), while Comer (known for the likes of ‘Killing Eve’ and ‘The Last Duel’) as the mystery woman.
‘The Death of Robin Hood’: The filmmakers speak
(L to R) Lupita Nyong’o as “Samira” and Director Michael Sarnoski in ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ from Paramount Pictures.
Lyrical Media has stumped up the money to make the film, while Aaron Ryder and Andrew Swett will produce under their Ryder Picture Company banner, alongside Alexander Black for Lyrical Media and Jackman. Lyrical’s Jon Rosenberg and Natalie Sellers are executive producers alongside Rama Gottumukkala and Sarnoski.
Here’s what Sarnoski says about the movie:
“It has been an incredible opportunity to reinvent and freshly innovate the story we all know of Robin Hood. Securing the perfect cast to transform the script to screen was essential. I could not be more thrilled and trusting in Hugh and Jodie to bring this story to life in a powerful and meaningful way.”
And here are producers Aaron Ryder and Andrew Swett:
“This is not the story of Robin Hood we’ve all come to know. Instead, Michael has crafted something far more grounded and visceral. Thanks to Alexander Black and our friends at Lyrical along with Rama and Michael, the world is going to love seeing Hugh and Jodie together in this epic.”
What have Bill Skarsgård, Murray Bartlett and Noah Jupe been up to?
Noah Jupe in ‘Lady in the Lake,’ premiering July 19, 2024 on Apple TV+.
Skarsgård will probably be pleased to be playing a character that doesn’t require him to be slathered in prosthetic make-up following his turns as Pennywise the demon clown in the ‘It’ movies and, more recently, the title figure in Robert Eggers’ vampiric horror hit ‘Nosferatu.’
He is reprising the Pennywise role in the ‘It’ spin-off prequel TV series ‘Welcome to Derry,’ which will be on screens via HBO later this year.
And he has a few films awaiting release, including horror thriller ‘Locked’ about a thief breaking into a luxury SUV who gets more than he bargained for; historical revenge epic ‘Emperor’ in which he plays King Philip II of Spain and Gus Van Sant’s new crime drama ‘Dead Man’s Wire.’
The actor is also attached to Andrew Niccol’s ‘Lord of War’ sequel ‘Lords of War,’ which finds Nicolas Cage’s character discovering he has a son.
Bartlett, who scored an Emmy for his role as Armond the resort manager in Season 1 of ‘The White Lotus,’ has also gone on to acclaim for a memorable episode of ‘The Last of Us’ and based-on-truth TV series ‘Welcome to Chippendales.’
Coming up, he has roles in new drama ‘Opus’ about an offbeat, long-missing pop star who reappears seemingly leading a cult, musical epic ‘O’Dessa,’ following a young woman’s quest to retrieve a family heirloom, and ‘At the Sea,’ which finds a woman returning to her family home after a stint in rehab.
And finally we have Jupe, who made his name starring in the first two ‘A Quiet Place’ movies (though doesn’t appear in ‘Day One’ since that focuses on different characters.)
He’s since appeared in the likes of ‘Honey Boy’ and will be part of the cast for the new season of ‘The Night Manager,’ which should arrive this year.
When will ‘The Death of Robin Hood’ be in theaters?
Production is kicking off this week in Ireland, which might explain the latest casting announcement.
A24 nabbed the domestic rights to the movie at last year’s Cannes Film Market, while True Brit Entertainment will be releasing the film in the U.K. and Ireland. There is, as of yet, no announced release date.
‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ writer and director Michael Sarnoski.
Opening in theaters on December 25th is ‘Nosferatu’, which is a remake of the classic 1922 German film, which itself was loosely based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel ‘Dracula’.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with filmmaker Robert Eggers in an extended interview about his work on ‘Nosferatu’, why he wanted to make the movie, his love for the original, the look of the new film, visual vs. practical effects, Bill Skarsgård and Lily-Rose Depp’s performances, why he loves working with Willem Dafoe, why he will never make a modern movie, and what he learned from making this project.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interview.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your fascination with the source material, why you wanted to remake this film, and how you wanted to do it differently than what we’ve seen before from this genre?
Robert Eggers: I mean, I saw F. W. Murnau‘s ‘Nosferatu’ that was made in 1922 when I was nine years old, and I watched on a VHS that was made from a degraded 16-millimeter print and there was a way in which the world and the vampire played by Max Schreck just seemed real and unearthed from the past and I was just totally transported to that world. I also loved that it turned Bram Stoker’s novel into a very simple fairy tale. So, I’ve been obsessed with ‘Nosferatu’ most of my life, but it’s not enough to be obsessed and love something there. You must have a reason to do it again. I thought that if I could tell the story through the eyes of the female protagonist, through Lily-Rose Depp’s character, that there would be a greater chance for the film to have more emotional and psychological depth because yes, it is a scary horror movie with a lot of dread and even some jump scares. But more than that, it is a tale of love and obsession and a Gothic romance. The other central thing that is very different from other versions is that over the years, vampires have become less and less and less scary, climaxing with Edward Cullen (‘Twilight’) and in order to make the vampire in the film scary again, I turned to folklore that was written about and by people who believe that vampires were real and were terrified of them and these folk vampires are walking undead, putrid corpses. So, then I asked myself, “What would a dead Transylvanian nobleman actually look like” and thus we created what Bill Skarsgård’s vampire is in this film.
MF: Did you only take inspiration from the original ‘Nosferatu’, or did you also draw from the ‘Dracula’ novel and other interpretations of the character?
RE: I mean, it’s everything. It’s very much the history of vampire films in general, but I’m inspired by all kinds of Gothic literature and Edgar Allan Poe, black and white Gothic movies from the 1930s to the 1960s, and art house Polish movies from the ’70s. I mean, the influences are massive. Even Mel Brooks‘ ‘Dracula: Dead and Loving’. It was helpful to see what are the mistakes that every Dracula movie has. That parody points them out, so you know not to make those mistakes.
MF: Can you talk about Bill Skarsgård’s performance and the specific way you wanted Count Orlok to look in the film?
RE: I mean, Bill’s incredibly transformative as Count Orlok. There’s no trace of Bill Skarsgård in the movie. He worked with an opera singer to lower his voice an octave. He has this incredibly low, powerful voice that if you’ve heard Bill speak, Bill speaks in a tenor voice like mine, and you would assume that we digitally manipulated it. But no, Bill trained and that is his performance and the prosthetics that took six hours to apply and then his utter transformation for Bill to disappear and the darkness to take over and him to become Count Orlok is quite impressive.
MF: Can you talk about your use of practical vs. visual effect in the film?
RE: There are certainly plenty of visual effects in the movie, but I try to do as many things practically as possible and, the things that you might expect to be visual effects, those are the things that I particularly would like to do practically. All of Bill’s makeup is done practically. There are thousands and thousands of rats in the film and the thousands of rats that would be in the foreground of the shot are real. The wolves are real. We built over 60 sets, including a massive backlog set of a northern German town.
MF: Can you also talk about the production design and the specific look of the film?
RE: Yeah, I mean, the reality of these sets is quite shocking. We talk about the finishes in the movie industry and when you’re in the middle of Orlok’s Great Hall in the castle, even without the lighting, it looks completely real. It’s wild.
MF: What was it like working with Lily-Rose Depp, and can you talk about her performance and her character’s descent into madness?
RE: Lily-Rose Depp’s performance is quite jaw-dropping, and so amazing. When I first met with her, I felt that she just understood the character so well and then she did this incredibly powerful audition that left me and the casting director and even the videographer who didn’t have anything invested in it in tears. But Ellen’s character has a sort of knowledge, a sort of insight into the dark realm, another realm, and she’s dealing with the demons that are inside of her and this vampire that’s after her. She does this incredible body work where she sometimes is having seizures and sometimes having, going through these wild acts of possession. She worked tirelessly with a movement coach on doing all these incredible body movements that also help these shocking emotions to arise. But again, the stuff that she does with her body, you would think would be CG manipulated or we would be using wire work, but it’s all her. She gives a tremendous performance.
MF: This is the third movie in a row you’ve made with Willem Dafoe. What do you like about working with him and is he your lucky charm at this point?
RE: I mean, Willem Dafoe is a legend. He’s one of the greatest actors of all time and I feel so joyful and thankful and humbled that Willem likes to work with me and keeps coming back. But obviously, he has this power and a sense of humor and a fire about him that makes all his roles so compelling. Here, as a slightly crazed vampire hunter occultist, it’s particularly enjoyable.
MF: All your films are period pieces. What do you like about making those types of movies and do you ever see yourself making a modern set film?
RE: Well, it’s more fun for me to do the research and to create these worlds. I live in a world of cell phones and toilets and dishwashers. I don’t need to make movies about it. It’s boring. How cool is it that I am dreaming about a castle for 10 years and then I get to stand inside the castle of my imagination? That is so much cooler than shooting a scene in a men’s room with someone looking at their cell phone.
MF: Finally, this is a movie you’ve wanted to make for a while, how does it feel now that you’ve accomplished that and what have you learned from this experience?
RE: I’m proud of what me and all my collaborators were able to accomplish. I’ve been working with the same creative heads of department for years and we’ve become further extensions of each, and we challenge each other, and we grow together. After so long, it’s not just my vision that we’ve articulated, but a collective vision and that is wonderful. But you also feel a little vulnerable because when it’s something that is this important to you, that’s kind of a strange feeling. But I’m eager for audiences to come to movie theaters and get transported into this world and enjoy ‘Nosferatu’, hopefully.
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What is the plot of ‘Nosferatu’?
Set in 1838 in Germany, Nosferatu follows the obsession between a haunted young woman, Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rise Depp), and the ancient Transylvanian vampire stalking her, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), leading to untold horror.
Director and writer Robert Eggers has wanted to remake ‘Nosferatu’ even before his stunning debut, ‘The Witch,’ came out in 2016. The silent 1922 original from director F.W. Murnau is one of the landmarks of both horror cinema and German Expressionist film, while Werner Herzog’s 1979 version is both an update of the material and a tribute to the Murnau classic.
Now Eggers has delivered his interpretation of the material, which itself is an adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel ‘Dracula’ in everything but name (the short version: Murnau could not get the rights to the book from Stoker’s widow, so he changed all the names and filmed it anyway). Eggers, our reigning master of period horror thanks to the likes of ‘The Witch’ and ‘The Lighthouse’ (2019), has incorporated elements of both previous versions into his film, along with aspects of ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ (the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola movie) and even nods to other horror cornerstones like ‘The Exorcist’ and Mario Bava’s ‘Black Sabbath.’
Eggers’ dark fantasia may quickly become a modern horror classic in its own right: The macabre, surreal ‘Nosferatu’ is steeped in dread and a thick atmosphere of death and decay, featuring a terrifying monster – played by an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård (Pennywise in ‘It’) – who proclaims that he is a primal force of evil (“I am an appetite, nothing more”) while emanating a despair and even loneliness that makes his corruption all the more palpable.
Set in 1838, ‘Nosferatu’ follows the basic plot that should be familiar to both readers of the original novel and generations of viewers who have watched cinematic variations on the tale, with a new wrinkle right from the onset: when we first meet the “melancholy” (as people suffering from depression and other clinical disorders were described back then) Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), she is a young woman plagued by terrible dreams and loneliness and desperate to make contact with something divine. Her slight touch of paranormal ability – branded “hysteria” – does indeed awaken something far, far away, but about as far from the angelic as one could imagine.
Years later, Ellen is married to up-and-coming estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) and has seemingly gotten control of her mental and emotional issues thanks to her newfound happiness. But dark thoughts begin to intrude when Thomas announces that at the behest of his employer, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), he must travel from their home in Wisborg, Germany to the distant land of Transylvania, where he is to close a deal for an elderly but extremely wealthy count named Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) to purchase a ruined property in Wisborg that he intends to make his new home. Leaving Ellen in the care of their friends Friedrich and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin), Thomas begins the long, arduous journey to Orlok’s castle – where he is met along the way by Romani who insist that he turn back at all costs.
Once at Orlok’s ancient, ominous abode – which seems to spread a literal blanket of decay over the land and everything around it – Thomas quickly realizes that there is something decidedly off about his host, who only appears at night. Orlok, of course, knows that Hutter is married to Ellen – the girl who cried out to him all those years ago – and luring Hutter to his castle while establishing himself in Wisborg is all part of Orlok’s plan to come to the “modern world” and claim her, spreading death and plague in his wake.
If there’s anything that slightly lets ‘Nosferatu’ down, it’s the fact that Eggers’ version – aside from the more explicitly perverse relationship between Ellen and Orlok – doesn’t hold many surprises. As fans of either previous version of ‘Nosferatu’ or many adaptations of ‘Dracula’ itself will know, this more or less follows Stoker’s time-tested narrative. Orlok imprisons and nearly kills Thomas before leaving for Wisborg on a doomed ship; his benefactor there, Knock (aka Renfield), arranges for his arrival while going insane; and as Thomas escapes and attempts to get home, a band of loyal friends, including the Hardings, Dr. Sievers (Ralph Ineson), and eventually the eccentric Dutch doctor/metaphysician Albin Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), join forces to protect Ellen against the peril coming for her and Wisborg, at great danger to themselves.
But while the story is familiar, Eggers drenches it in so much rich detail, thick atmosphere, and powerful malevolence that he perhaps creates the most immersive interpretation yet. And even though his Orlok/Dracula has moments where he is almost pitiable, this is perhaps the most purely monstrous version of the iconic character, an embodiment of evil and living death personified in one amazing shot of the shadow of his hand reaching across the darkened rooftops of Wisborg. “Nosferatu” and “Dracula” itself have always used their central character as a metaphor for many things, but the depravity and destruction he brings with him here are tangible like never before.
Also tangible is the time and place of Eggers’ tale, brought to life by his regular collaborators like production designer Craig Lathrop, DP Jarin Blaschke, and costume designer Linda Muir, who all bring an astonishing level of specificity and tactility to the darkened world of ‘Nosferatu.’ Blaschke in particular pays homage to the many versions of this tale that have come before – an eerie sequence in which Thomas walks through a dead forest as Orlok’s spectral coach approaches to pick him up could have been right out of the Murnau film – while creating a Gothic palette that’s wholly original to this movie.
With his filmography to date, Bill Skarsgård may become a modern Lon Chaney, the silent film star who specialized in grotesques and monsters. He draws upon both the Schreck and Kinski versions of Orlok, as well as Gary Oldman’s Count Dracula, yet provides a wholly new interpretation of the legendary vampire. Aided by incredible makeup from David White and Linda Muir’s costume, Orlok looks like a real 16th century Transylvania nobleman – albeit one that has been decomposing for centuries.
But all the makeup in the world could not do the job if Skarsgård himself didn’t fully inhabit the role, his blazing eyes and genuinely chilling voice delivering the immensity of Orlok’s depravity and even some of his self-pity and existential horror at his own existence. He, Eggers, White, and Muir have created a monster for the ages.
The other big story of this superb cast may be Lily-Rose Depp. Saddled previously with the HBO debacle ‘The Idol,’ Depp makes Ellen the driving force of the story, her unknowing attraction to the darkness battling with her yearning for a normal life and her love for Thomas. It’s that conflict within that makes Ellen come to life, the two sides to her personality also a metaphor for the women of the era – and many other eras – torn between knowing their “station” and forging ahead with lives of their own making. Depp finds both Ellen’s loving nature and her tragic inner self, as well as the darker aspects of her personality that are brought to bear by the presence of Orlok.
Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas is also given more depth here than the usual stalwart hero he’s portrayed as. Thomas starts out as a relative innocent, dedicated to providing for his wife and their life together, but his exposure to the corruption of Orlok changes him permanently. Hoult – who’s already having a hell of a year with ‘Juror #2’ and ‘The Order’ – delivers another solid performance as a man whose entire view of the world and what exists in it is upended with terrible results.
The other actors – Taylor-Johnson and Corrin as the loyal but increasingly frightened and exhausted Hardings, McBurney as the wildly demented Knock, Ineson as the rational Sievers, and of course Eggers regular Dafoe as the peculiar yet commanding Von Franz, round out an ensemble that does justice to each of their characters, all of them bringing an exceptional emotional and psychological commitment to the material.
Not only is ‘Nosferatu’ Robert Eggers’ most personal of his four films to date, a masterful retelling of a classic tale, and an achievement that secures his place among modern horror auteurs like Guillermo del Toro and Mike Flanagan, but it also resets the cinematic depiction of the vampire.
‘Nosferatu’ returns the monster to its ancient roots, particularly that of the Romanian strigoi and other manifestations in Eastern European folklore, shedding nearly all the modern romanticism of tales like ‘Twilight’ while retaining the creature’s symbolism as both a deliverer of death and a purveyor of primal, twisted urges. As a result, this ‘Nosferatu’ can stand proudly alongside its predecessors and may become a genre benchmark in its own right as time goes on.
‘Nosferatu’ receives 9 out of 10 stars.
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What is the plot of ‘Nosferatu’?
A young woman haunted by spectral visions comes under the spell of an ancient vampire, whose obsession brings unimaginable evil and horror to everyone in his path.
Here’s a little secret: this writer has never been a huge fan of the original 1994 movie ‘The Crow.’ At the time, it seemed dreary, gratuitous, and largely a case of style over substance, with simplistic characters and a reactionary, nihilistic narrative. But the death of lead actor Brandon Lee — who was accidentally shot on the set and died later from his injuries, just a few days before the end of filming — cast an unmistakably somber pall over the film that one would have to be a robot not to feel. Lee is great despite the movie around him, but there is also a ghostly aura around his presence onscreen that permeates the entire movie and lifts an otherwise ho-hum revenge thriller into a different light that has since made it a cult classic.
Fairly or not, taking the mystique and legend of Lee out of the equation, as the new remake of ‘The Crow’ does, leaves you with nothing but the ho-hum revenge thriller. Despite the best efforts of star Bill Skarsgård (who’s cornering the market on movie monsters with his past portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing Clown in ‘It’ and his upcoming title turn in ‘Nosferatu’) and a few inspired moments, this long-in-development reboot from director Rupert Sanders (‘Snow White and the Huntsman’) is dull, derivative, and predictable, lacking in energy both from its direction, its style, and even its cast.
Story and Direction
(L to R) Bill Skarsgård and FKA twigs in ‘The Crow.’ Photo Credit: Larry Horricks for Lionsgate.
The new ‘Crow,’ written by Zach Baylin and William Schneider, keeps the bones of the story (based on the original 1989 graphic novel by James O’Barr) but adds a convoluted new set-up to get us to the main plot. Skarsgård’s Eric Draven is in a rehab facility in a rather vague location (it appears to be out in relatively sunny countryside, while the unnamed city where the primary action takes place is perpetually dark and rainy) for rather vague reasons (a flashback reveals he watched a treasured animal die as a child) when he meets fellow resident Shelly (FKA Twigs), a musician who allowed herself to get arrested for possession of drugs and sent to the facility to avoid an even darker fate.
This is where ‘The Crow’ 2024 diverges sharply from the 1994 film: whereas the villains in that movie were local Detroit thugs (yes, that movie was set in Detroit; the new one is supposed to be set in an American city but was shot in Germany and Prague) who were looking to take over the apartment building where Eric and Shelly make their home, the antagonist here is Vincent Roag (a bored Danny Huston), who is apparently immortal thanks to a deal he made with the Devil ages ago. That deal involves using a demonic voice to whisper in people’s ears and make them either kill themselves or someone nearby, thus corrupting their soul and sending them to hell. Shelly has been used in this fashion by Roag to murder someone, thus damning her, but she has the whole thing on videotape (although how it’s going to bring him down remains frustratingly unclear).
It’s a needlessly complicated back story that diminishes the power of Eric himself becoming a supernatural being. Which, of course, is what eventually happens. He and Shelly rather easily escape rehab just ahead of Roag’s goon squad (led by ‘Foundation’ star Laura Birn, who deserves better) and enjoy an inexplicably idle montage of hanging out at a lake with their friends or making sweet love and/or music together (the timeline in this film is really murky). But Roeg’s minions catch up with them again at Eric’s apartment, suffocating both of them in a harrowing sequence as they watch each other die.
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Eric is sent to a gray CG afterlife that looks like the outside of an abandoned railyard, where ghostly mentor Kronos (Sami Bouajila) provides the necessary exposition for the film to move forward. Eric is dead, but he can return to the land of the living and avenge Shelly’s death, or “put the wrong things right.” His physical body can heal from any wound, as long as his love for Shelly remains “pure.” And he can save her damned soul as well – but at a much higher cost.
From there, it becomes a rather standard stalk-and-kill scenario, albeit with copious amounts of CG blood (God, how we miss karo syrup sometimes) and some enjoyably bonkers deaths, particularly in one extended battle in an opera house that leaves Eric standing amidst a pile of severed limbs and heads (two of which he dispatches in unintentionally hilarious fashion). But while Eric faced distinctive villains like Michael Wincott’s Top Dollar and his moll Myca (Bai Ling) back in 1994, his enemies here are just a bunch of the usual burly, vaguely Eastern European-looking security guys in nice suits, whom Roag seems to have in endless supply. The title bird, a sort of spirit guide in the first film, just kind of tags along in this one.
There’s an overall lack of suspense, energy, or tension in the proceedings, as everyone seems to know that they’re going through some predictable paces. The eventual confrontation between Eric and Roag, after just about everyone else has been killed, is as disappointingly flat as everything else on display here. The Goth aesthetic and alternative/metal soundtrack of the original film have been replaced with a generalized gray-brown murk and actually some pretty good songs from the likes of Foals, Enya, and Traitrs. But the overall style that made the first film such a cultural touchpoint of its time simply cannot be channeled in the same way.
The Cast
(L to R) Bill Skarsgård and FKA twigs in ‘The Crow.’ Photo Credit: Larry Horricks for Lionsgate.
We very much enjoyed Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the ‘It’ movies, as well as his turns in films like ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ and ‘Barbarian.’ And while it’s unfair to judge him against Brandon Lee, the latter is such an integral part of the ‘Crow’ legacy and a dominant presence in the original film. It’s not possible to disregard the fact that while Lee was able to transcend the material, Skarsgård can’t. He gives it his best shot, but the emotional undercurrents simply aren’t there, while his patchwork look of random tattoos, choppy hair, and disheveled clothing doesn’t do anything to build his character.
There is also no chemistry between him and FKA Twigs, who gives a dead-eyed, monotone performance in a crucial role. Some of the scenes between Twigs and Skarsgård simply lapse into silence, as if they have nothing more to say to each other, and Twigs is not a strong enough actor to flesh Shelly out. A subplot involving her relationship with her mother (Josette Simon) goes largely unexplored and mostly forgotten, but based on this we’re not sure Twigs can handle anything too complex anyway. In a movie already existing on a purely surface level, an actor needs all the tools they can muster, and Twigs falls short.
Danny Huston mostly phones in his villainous role as Roag, a character whose own back story and methodology is confusing to say the least. Is he a vampire? A demon? Both? It’s never quite clear. Laura Birn remains a striking presence (her work as the android Demerzel on ‘Foundation’ is one of that series’ strong points) but is underused, while the rest of the cast doesn’t get enough to do to stand out here.
Final Thoughts
Bill Skarsgård in ‘The Crow.’ Photo Credit: Larry Horricks for Lionsgate.
This is IP mining at best, an attempt to cash in on a brand name that still has some resonance 30 years later (a string of poor sequels kept it in public view for a while as well), and sheer exploitation at worst. But above all, it’s mediocre: too much of ‘The Crow’ has the kind of bland feel that one gets from watching direct-to-video thrillers. Whatever aura Brandon Lee brought to the original is no longer there, and even the love story at the heart of the movie pales in comparison.
The original 1994 ‘The Crow’ remains a testament to a promising actor and career tragically lost far too soon, as well as a snapshot of a particular moment in youth culture. Lacking either of those aspects, 2024’s ‘The Crow’ is a testament to what happens when story material is resurrected and rebooted without wondering if it should be in the first place.
‘The Crow’ receives 3 out of 10 stars.
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What is the plot of ‘The Crow’?
Damaged souls Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA Twigs) fall deeply in love, only for Shelly’s dark past and demonic benefactor to catch up with her. After the couple are brutally murdered, Eric is sent back from the realm of the dead to “put the wrong things right” – even if it means it will cost him the one thing he wants most of all.
