‘The Crow’ Ending Explained, Sequel Ideas Revealed

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the entire plot of “The Crow,” now playing in theaters.

Director Rupert Sanders knows that “The Crow,” his third film, will inevitably be seen through the spectrum of nostalgia for the 1994 cult hit.

“I just wanted to make something,” he says. “I knew there would be people who didn’t want it to happen. But I didn’t record over someone’s VHS — that movie’s still there and those people are still going to love that movie.”

Yet Sanders is confident in his new vision of the antihero. In his film, Eric (Bill Skarsgård) and his fiancée Shelly (FKA Twigs) are murdered by crime boss Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston). Yet Eric is offered the chance to walk the earth again as a powerful, dark vigilante known as The Crow and take revenge by killing everyone in Roeg’s organization.

For the second adaptation of the 1989 comic book, the director had very specific inspirations in mind.

“I love movies like ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and ‘Angel Heart,’” he says. “They’re visually compelling and deal with the psychological understanding of the worlds beyond our world. I love this idea of a darkly romantic love story, like a Cure song that has this beautiful broken melancholy. It’s about love, loss and grief. I just wanted to talk to people in that way. … We’re an emotionally resonant movie that’s trying to compete with the the big guys around us in this genre.”

One balancing act that Sanders focused on was making sure the love story was as epic as the action scenes and the brawling wasn’t just empty visuals.

“It’s about making sure that your character is present and emotionally working within those action scenes,” he says. “Bill did this incredible job, especially in the climax of the movie. He’s covered in blood, he’s exhausted from the killing, and he stops for just a minute of breath — he’s almost crying inside. He…