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‘The Teacher’ Malayalam movie review: Amala Paul drama tells a hard-hitting story

Director vivek’s film on sexual violence stars amala paul, who shows maturity as an actor, but the same cannot be said for the writing of the sensitive subject.

December 02, 2022 06:29 pm | Updated 06:32 pm IST

Amala Paul in ‘The Teacher’

The Teacher is not easy to watch, films about sexual violence seldom are. What is unsettling is that the perpetrators are barely out of school, and the victim/survivor is a teacher they meet during an inter-school competition. Even more disturbing is their nonchalance about the assault, which they have recorded. 

The film, directed by Vivek, pivots around Devika (Amala Paul), a Physical Education teacher in a government school who is drugged and raped. The film opens with a confused Devika ‘feeling’ the assault and checking herself for signs of something she cannot remember. One went in expecting the cyberbullying tropes and cliches. But therein lies the twist; Devika is a fighter, she refuses to ‘let it go’, as her husband (Hakkim Shajahan) suggests. She tracks down her attackers and ‘punishes’ them.

Her allies include her mother-in-law Patton Kalyani, a pan-chewing, beedi -puffing Communist party activist essayed brilliantly by Manju Pillai. Kalyani is appalled that her son cannot understand the severity of the crime and the trauma Devika has undergone. Manju Pillai could have been utilised more, but then it is Devika’s story. 

Sujith, Devika’s husband, initially lashes out when she tells him of the sexual assault, even accusing her of causing it. There is, what feels like, redemption for the character who realises his mistake and wants to set things right, but the damage has been done to the relationship. Devika is unforgiving when he begs for a second chance. The climax denies him redemption when we realise that the ‘acceptance’ and ‘support’ were conditional to her getting an abortion.  

The couple had been trying to get pregnant for a couple of years; after the rape, she learns she is pregnant. They don’t know if it was the result of the assault, hence the expectation that the pregnancy is terminated.   

However, since the writers — PV Shajikumar and Vivek — are men, the story is essentially from the male perspective. There are also things Devika does which appear unnecessarily risky, like travelling with a person she suspects of being her rapist late in the night, let alone confronting him alone.

Despite all the explanatory threads, The Teacher sticks to a tight two hours. However, one can’t help but wonder why actors Nandu, Mala Parvathy, Dinesh Prabhakar and footballer/actor IM Vijayan all figure in the film in blink-and-miss roles! What little we see of these three actors’ work is very well executed, but why are they there? Chemban Vinod has a substantial role since it is a cameo, and Anumol has a bit more to do.  

Amala Paul shows flashes of maturing as an actor, but the film, unfortunately, demands only versions of three emotions — anger, disgust, and grief — in a loop. It is disturbing that the characters believe they have no hope of justice, but take the law into their hands.  

An aspect of the climax where Devika literally takes on her attackers is problematic. Chemban Vinod’s character says he is not interested in women; the inference drawn is that he is queer. So when he enters and closes the door to a room with one of the attackers inside, the suggestion is unsavoury especially when we hear the younger man shout for help. Having a queer character is great, but makers have to be sensitive about how they are portrayed.

The Teacher is currently running in theatres

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‘The Teacher’ Review: Inspired by True Events Drama Offers an Undercooked Revenge Story

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Although Shalit’s capture and release inspired the backbone of Farah Nabulsi’s debut feature, his counterpart in the film, Nathanial Cohen, is a mere plot device spoken about more than he’s glancingly seen. Our protagonist is instead completely fictional Basem (Saleh Bakri, most recently seen in “The Blue Caftan”), a Palestinian man who teaches English at a small boys school. At his job he’s stern but gentle, guiding shyer students through oral recitations before chewing out the troubled Yacoub (Bakri’s younger brother Mahmoud) when he hands in a phoned-in assignment. But although he puts on a peaceful and decidedly nonpolitical front, Basem is also a man with deep anger toward the occupation of his country, and the film slowly reveals his ties to the Palestinian political resistance group that have held Cohen in captivity for three years, who eventually charge him with keeping the prisoner at his home. Related Stories ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ Trailer: Tolkien Meets ‘Game of Thrones’ Meets Anime Jason Schwartzman Is the American Jean-Pierre Léaud: The Actor on ‘Between the Temples,’ ‘Queer,’ and the Coppola Dynasty

Before “The Teacher,” Nabulsi won a BAFTA and netted an Oscar nom for her debut short, “The Present,” which, like her debut feature, also starred Bakri, and was shot in Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Nabulsi, who was born and raised in London to parents from Palestine, is clearly passionate about using her work to bring attention to the way Israel’s violence towards Palestine impacts the every day lives of civilians. But good intentions don’t always translate to strong storytelling, and in “The Teacher” — which frequently resembles an elongated short film rather than a fleshed out feature — good intentions are pretty much all that show up onscreen.

Bakri, a talented actor with perfectly weary eyes, does what he can with the material, but newcomer Rahman struggles to add dimension that simply isn’t there in Nabulsi’s unengaging script, which skates over the particulars of these characters in favor of keeping them as broad, largely forgettable archetypes. In the third act, Adam moves into Basem’s house, and the resulting domestic activities that bring the two closer together is covered in a quick, rushed montage that pushes their bond further out of the audience’s grasp.

With so much time sucked up by the tacked-on romantic subplot, “The Teacher” gives short shrift to dynamics that carry much more necessity and weight. Basem’s backstory is dolled out in a few short perfunctory flashbacks. Also involved in the action is Cohen’s parents, Simon (Stanley Townsend) and Rachel (Andrea Irvine). American Jews who disapproved of their son running off to join the IDF (an invention for the film; the real Shalit was born and raised in Israel), the two express discomfort and ambivalence about the actions of the Israeli government, though they still partner with them to find their son. In the best scene in the film, Simon and Basem briefly come face-to-face, and their parallel struggles as fathers whose sons have been affected by the conflict comes into focus — even as Basem astutely points out how Simon’s child is given much more humanity and priority than his own. It’s a raw moment of emotion that briefly brings the film alive, but doesn’t uplift what’s surrounding it.

“The Teacher” premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

kiran rp 583 days ago

Trash movie ...terrible ideas ,about students and teachers-and about husbands ,wives, society ....

Anu Shree 589 days ago

Arvin 604 days ago.

Good start and then Bad climax and terrible ending

msrinivas 605 days ago

Good movie revenge story between students and teacher

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The Teacher Reviews

The immense moral and political pressures brought to bear on the Palestinian population ... bring to mind similar strains and terrors for people in those portions of Europe and elsewhere under Nazi rule during World War II.

Full Review | May 30, 2024

As with her BAFTA-winning short, The Present, the filmmaker offers a bleak perspective on the political and social injustices experienced by Palestinians. Yet, even at its most desolate, both films are anchored by the humanising portraits at its core.

Full Review | Apr 22, 2024

...its ripple effects are drawn clearly to reverberate in an entirely different way well after the film ends, passing on a bit of hope instead of fear...

Full Review | Dec 20, 2023

A passionate but uneven debut...

Full Review | Dec 19, 2023

Ground zero here – for the characters, for the nations, for the filmmaker – is futility. Nabulsi drops us on that ground and doesn’t let us pretend it’s anything else.

Ultimately, it’s this imbalance of power and relative worth (or the lack of it) of human lives that is the font of Nabulsi’s creative anger that propels her film.

Even if a bit too much of the western view on the events, “The Teacher” emerges as a beautiful, meaningful film that shows quite accurately how the circle of violence is created and keeps erupting in the area.

Full Review | Original Score: 6 | Dec 17, 2023

"Although you can feel the plot machinations creak into place like so many first features, Nabulsi's film deals with such important subject matter so sensitively that its clunkiness and predictability matter little."

Full Review | Sep 13, 2023

There's no vagueness here to the fact that a clandestine war is being waged by rebels as opposed to terrorists. That's not to say it condones their actions either. It merely contextualizes them.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 12, 2023

Uneven but often riveting.

Full Review | Sep 12, 2023

The movie struggles to translate its noble aims to compelling drama, with any audience investment merely being a byproduct of the inherently high stakes.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Sep 11, 2023

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The Teacher

The Teacher: Release Date, Trailer, Songs, Cast

• Release Date 2 December 2022
• Language Malayalam
• Genre Drama, Thriller
• Duration 1h 54min
• Cast Amala Paul, Hakkim Shah, Chemban Vinod Jose, Manju Pillai, Nandhu, I. M. Vijayan, Shajeer P. Basheer, Anumol, Vinita Koshy, Hareesh Pengan, Mala Parvathy, Prashanth Murali, Dinesh Prabhakar, Senthil Krishna
• Director Vivek
• Writer Vivek, P. V. Shajikumar
• Cinematography Anu Muthedom
• Music Dawn Vincent
• Producer Varun Tripuraneni, Abhishek Ramisetty, G. Pruthviraj
• Production Nutmeg Productions, VTV Films
• Certificate 16+

About The Teacher Movie (2022)

The world of Devika (Amala Paul), a physical education teacher, turns upside down when a scandalous video of her drugged assault goes viral, becoming a social pariah. Devika decides to fight back, seek revenge, and punish all the culprits.

The Teacher Movie Cast, Release Date, Trailer, Songs and Ratings

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The Teacher (Review, Book Summary & Spoilers)

By freida mcfadden.

Book review, full book summary and synopsis for The Teacher by Freida McFadden, a twisty psychological thriller about an ostracized student and a jealous wife.

In The Teacher by Frieda McFadden, Addie is an ostracized student attending Caseham High. The other students believe she was romantically involved with one of the teachers last year and that he was fired as a result.

Meanwhile, Eve and Nate Bennett are a married couple who are both teachers at the school. Eve is paranoid about her handsome husband, the late nights he works and the many young women at school who have crushes on him.

In this twisty psychological thriller, it's never quite clear who can be trusted, what secrets each of the characters hold, and where the truth lies.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

The one-paragraph version: Addie is a high school senior who is believed to have had an improper relationship with a former teacher. While that was a misunderstanding, she begins an affair with Nate, the handsome married English teacher. There's an altercation and Nate's wife Eve is injured by Addie, but Nate is the one who then kills Eve. Nate tries to frame Addie, but another student he was sleeping with, Kenzie, comes forward, and Addie and Kenzie go to the police with the truth. Meanwhile, it's revealed that Eve survived and was buried alive, but dug her way out. Eve is actually a former student of Nate's that he seduced. With the help of Jay (who Eve was having an affair with), she lures Nate to the grave, knocks him out and buries him alive.

In Part I , Addie is a high school junior at Caseham High who is rumored to have gotten a teacher, Arthur Tuttle, fired due to them having an improper relationship. At school, she is ostracized and ignored by Hudson, her former best friend. She's also bulled by Kenize, Hudson's popular and pretty new girlfriend. It's revealed that Hudson stopped speaking to Addie after an accident that resulted in them killing Addie's abusive, alcoholic father a year ago (pushed down the stairs in an altercation).

Meanwhile, Eve and Nate are a married couple and both teachers at Caseham. Nate is very handsome, and he constantly rebuffs Eve's attempts to be more affectionate and have more sex. Eve also has a tendency to buy expensive pairs of heels, which Nate disapproves of. Eve, jealous and frustrated, has been having an affair with Jay, a shoe salesman for four months.

Nate loves poetry and takes an interest in Addie after reading one of her poems. Soon Nate and Addie begin an affair, and Addie loses her virginity to Nate. He writes Addie a poem. It's revealed that unlike now, the incident with Mr. Tuttle was actually a misunderstanding. Arthur had been tutoring Addie, and she'd gone to his house for support one night, but she was spotted in the bushes looking in on him and his wife having dinner. The optics of the situation meant that Arthur ended up being fired.

Addie gets increasingly attached to Nate, and Eve eventually sees Nate and Addie kissing. She tells Nate to end it and that she wants a divorce. When Addie goes to try to convince Eve that they're really in love, Addie gets hysterical and hits Eve with a frying pan. Addie calls Nate for help. It turns out Eve is still alive, but Nate kills Eve by choking her to death, fearing what she knows. When Addie asks asks about the red marks on Eva's neck, Nate avoids the question.

In Part II , Nate and Addie dig a grave, but Nate ditches Addie to bury the body alone. Addie ends up calling Hudson to pick her up. The next day, Nate tells the police that his wife has gone missing and hints that Addie could be involved. The police believe him at first, but they hint to Addie that he is trying to pin the disappearance on her.

Kenzie reveals to Addie that she saw Addie with the poem that Nate had given to Addie. Kenzie recognized it because it's the same one he once gave to her. Kenzie started sleeping with Nate when she was 14. The two agree to go to police and tell them the truth.

In Part III , it's revealed that Eve was actually still alive and able to dig her way out since Addie had merely covered her with leaves. Eve has been staying with Jay. Eve and Jay lure Nate back to the grave, knock him out and bury him alive. It's revealed that Eve was also a former student of Nate's that he seduced many years ago when she was 15.

In the Epilogue , people think Nate simply disappeared after facing being labeled a sex offender. And Eve resurfaces, saying she just wanted to get away for a few days. It's revealed that the "Jay" that Eve was seeing was actually Hudson ("Jay" being short for Jankowski, his last name), but that's over now. The book ends with Hudson and Addie holding hands.

For more detail, see the full Section-by-Section Summary .

If this summary was useful to you, please consider supporting this site by leaving a tip ( $2 , $3 , or $5 ) or joining the Patreon !

Book Review

The Teacher by Frieda McFadden wasn’t really on my radar before it came out earlier this month, but early reviews have been pretty positive. I was thinking about going see a friend’s band perform at a bar nearby tonight, but it’s been rainy and overcast this weekend, so I thought this could be a good time to stay in and read a quick, fun thriller instead.

To be honest, I wasn’t all that interested in the premise at first. It seemed kind of random to me — something about a jealous wife and something about a student who may or may not have had an illicit student-teacher relationship with a teacher who was fired. I mostly gave it a chance since other people seem to be liking it.

I sped through this pretty easily. The Teacher is a fast read. I try to appreciate when these mystery/thriller novels try to add depth and real psychological nuance to their characters and stories, but honestly there’s also something to be said about a thriller that just gets the job done as well. This is more of the latter variety.

The Teacher is all plot, drama, smoke and mirrors with a few twists along the way. It does get into some darker territory, but the book tends not to dwell on these things, too busy skipping along at a moderate clip to dive deep into the murkier aspects of its plot.

I liked that the story tries to go against what you might expect to happen in some ways. I also liked that there’s a pretty satisfying comeuppance at the end. There’s some small twists, and one big twist that I appreciated. Lots of good stuff going on here.

The writing is pretty much what you’d expect from a run-of-the-mill thriller, but it gets the job done.

Read it or Skip it?

I found The Teacher to be a satisfying and serviceable thriller. There wasn’t anything about it that really “wow”ed me, but I thought the plot was relatively believable as far as thrillers go, and I liked that it defied my expectations in some ways. I’m glad I picked it up. It’s a fairly generic mystery-thriller, but it’s a solid one that I enjoyed.

It might not end up being your favorite book or anything, but I imagine most mystery-thriller fans would find that this scratches that itch pretty effectively.

See The Teacher on Amazon.

P.S. The last psychological thriller I read, reviewed and enjoyed before this one was Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney.

The Teacher Audiobook Review

Narrator : Leslie Howard & Danny Montooth Length : 9 hours 34 minutes

Easy listening, good narration. A more than serviceable audiobook and a good option for listening to this book. I probably read half of this and listened to half of this.

Hear a sample of The Teacher audiobook on Libro.fm.

Book Excerpt

Read the first pages of The Teacher

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Eve has a good life. She gets up each day, gets a kiss from her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except…

Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye.

Addie can't be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that's what everyone says.

But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet.

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12 comments

Share your thoughts cancel reply.

Why didn’t Eve know Hudson was a student at the HS she taught? He was the QB for goodness sakes!

I think she did know — but we (the reader) just don’t get to find out until the end

That’s exactly what I’m thinking! It doesn’t make sense that she did know, since she thought he was married with a kid. Also- he must have known she was a teacher too. Did he just never want to mention it?

I went back and re-read all the Eve/Jay parts, and he never says “wife,” “child,” or that he’s married. Nor does Eve ever reference Jay’s wife or child, but only “that woman” and “the baby.” The author ties those loose ends up at the end when Hudson’s one-year-old brother is mentioned. But what is most telling is a line when Eve is narrating how she and Jay met, she says “there was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t quite place it at first.” She ends that chapter with a comment about wishing she and Jay could run off together, but then says she knows this will all end horribly. So brilliant! She TOTALLY knew he was a student, and why would it end horribly? Because she was sleeping with a student!

So Jay aka Hudson went to the pumpkin patch twice; to pick up Addie & help Eve.

Ummm was I the only one who though that jay was some middle aged/old man who had a kid and a wife??? Like he is in high school and eve is saying that nate is being inappropriate like ummmmmmm miss Gurl! #hypocrite

Exactly!!!!!

I was thinking that makes Jay the creepiest of all. When he went to the pumpkin patch the 2nd time he knows Addie is involved in Eve being buried out there yet he ends up still sort of dating her in the end. If I were him going there the 2nd time, I’d never want to have anything to do with Addie again.

Who was digging a grave in the prologue of the book ?

I believe it was Hudson. Digging the grave for Eve to bury Nate in

Ahhh I didn’t think about Jay being the one digging at the beginning! That was the question I walked away with but now I see that Jay is the only option that fits there.

Da história, o que mais me impressionou foi a personagem Hudson/Jay. Tive de reler os capítulos em que Evento menciona os seus encontros. Não faz muito sentido eles simplesmente não se conhecerem pq ele era estudante na escola onde trabalhava. Criei um Jay na minha cabeça bem mais velho. Para mim a grande falha no livro está na construção do enredo a volta deste personagem…deixa pontas soltas que não me convencem. Ok que a mulher com quem fala deve ser a mãe, assim como o bebê o irmão. No entanto, a descrição feita do personagem, encaminha para um homem e não um adolescente. Relativamente a cova que estavam a cavar logo no início, creio que seria a Addie. Qdo o Nate foi lá, o buraco já estava feito.

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The Teacher

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An emotionally troubled teacher's life begins to fall apart as she faces accusations of sleeping with a student. An emotionally troubled teacher's life begins to fall apart as she faces accusations of sleeping with a student. An emotionally troubled teacher's life begins to fall apart as she faces accusations of sleeping with a student.

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‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ Review: Lessons Are Taught and Taut in a Gripping Classroom-Ethics Thriller

An idealistic teacher in a German school faces spiraling consequences when one of her students is accused of stealing in İlker Çatak's tense social parable.

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When his indignant parents supply a plausible explanation, Carla is further convinced of Ali’s innocence and of the covertly racist nature of the accusations against him — not only on the part of his pre-teen peers but also of her fellow teachers. As the energetic, dedicated newcomer in a faculty full of more jaded, less student-focused educators, Carla is subtly estranged from her colleagues anyway: Parallels are clearly drawn between the cliquey dynamics and divisions in the seventh grade homeroom, and those of the staffroom. 

As Carla has the bright edges of her idealism chipped away, the color gradually fades from Judith Kaufman’s crisp, freshly washed handheld cinematography. In this cold palette, the corridors and bathrooms become comfortless, hard-edged, overlit places, without dark corners in which the truth can hide. Yet the story plays out ambivalently, and not just because Mrs Kuhn’s guilt is never firmly established, just as Ali’s innocence is never wholly proven. The characterization of Carla herself is also fraught. She is sympathetic and genuinely committed to her students, but also overly rigid, almost prim in her disavowal of the other, loucher teachers. If she has a fatal flaw it is hubris: the folly of believing that whatever compromises her peers may have made, somehow her principles are pure enough to withstand the realpolitik of mass education. 

Aside from some unnecessarily melodramatic surreal sequences that only communicate what Benesch’s performance has already told us about Carla’s fraying state of mind, and the slight overuse of pacy scoring to offset Gesa Jäger’s deceptively sedate editing, “The Teachers’ Lounge” — the third feature from Student Academy Award winner Çatak — is a fine exercise in restrained but mounting tension. It saves its killer flourish for last, with a sly reversal in which a moment of saddening defeat is shot to look like a hero’s victory. It makes the film into an ironic lament for those on both sides of the desk, who believe they can outwit or outplay a system that is necessarily designed to protect the interests of the many, at the expense of the troublesome but possibly brilliant few.

That said, this is no broadside against Germany’s academic apparatus, nor even against the failings of educational institutions more generally. Instead, it makes the subtle but striking argument that school is not some sterile, cloistered haven in which we can safely prepare young minds for the challenges of the real world: It is the real world, and at every roll call, all those challenges are already present.

Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Panorama), Feb. 26, 2023. Running time: 94 MIN. 

• Production: (Germany) An If… Prods. production in co-production with ZDF/Arte. (World sales: Be For Films, Brussels.) Producer: Ingo Fliess.
• Crew: Director: İlker Çatak. Screenplay: Çatak, Johannes Duncker. Camera: Judith Kaufman. Editor: Gesa Jäger. Music: Marvin Miller.
• With: Leonie Benesch, Leo Stettnisch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer, Rafael Stachoviak, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Kathrin Wehlisch, Sarah Bauerett, Oscak Zickur, Antonia Luise Krämer, Elsa Kireger, Vincent Stachowiak, Can Rodenbostel, Padmé Hamdemir, Lisa Marie Trense. (German, Turkish, Polish, English dialogue.)

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They Finally Made The Crow for Goth Incompetents

I can’t say for sure that the doomed lovers in the new The Crow were modeled after Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox. But once it occurred to me, the comparison became impossible to shake, because the only better way to sum up the film’s sweaty approach to contemporize its story is the fact that its villain is trying to avoid being canceled. Its hero, Eric Draven, as played by Bill Skarsgård, has the silhouette of a Soundcloud scarecrow, crowned with a Bushwick mullet and inked with tattoos — including a cursive “Lullaby” over an eyebrow — that scream “poor decision-making” as much as they do “emotional rebellion.” Meanwhile, Shelly (FKA Twigs) is pitched as a princess with a dark streak, all elf locks, slip dresses, and sheer layers, a girl who was raised in wealth and trained as a pianist but turned to partying thanks to toxic parenting. The Eric of James O’Barr’s 1989 comic was modeled after Iggy Pop and Bauhaus’s Peter Murphy. An emo-rap update feels right for a movie adamantly branded as not a remake or reboot but a reimagining of the original source material.

The Crow isn’t untouchable — it’s spawned way too many sequels, not to mention a short-lived TV show, for that. But O’Barr’s work and Alex Proyas’s 1994 film adaptation were accompanied by real tragedies — the death of O’Barr’s fiancée in an accident involving a drunk driver and the death of star Brandon Lee in an on-set accident — that gave added ballast to their tormented depictions of a grief-stricken man rising from the grave to seek closure in violent retribution. This new Crow , messily directed by Ghost in the Shell ’s Rupert Sanders, with a screenplay by Zach Baylin and William Schneider, feels so lightweight in comparison that it’s almost endearing. Its two beautiful dummies meet in rehab, where they endure the indignity of being made to wear pink sweatsuits and fall in love during group-therapy exercises. Eric imagines Shelly topless in the sketches he pins to his wall, while Shelly is irresistibly drawn to the way Eric sits by himself, declaring him “quite brilliantly broken.” Skarsgård and Twigs have a total absence of chemistry, and while she’s adequate in what’s still basically a dead-wife role, he’s shockingly inert for someone with a career built almost entirely on characters at the intersection of creepy and hottie.

The film may insist that Eric and Shelly’s is a grand romance of soul mates, but what it actually gives us is a burnout-detention boyfriend/rebellious-cheerleader girlfriend dynamic that doesn’t feel like it would last a long weekend. Fittingly, when Eric rises from the grave after he and Shelly are murdered by henchmen on the orders of evil bigwig Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), he proves pretty inept at undead vengeance. It’s not just that he’s not much of a fighter — that doesn’t matter when your body regenerates thanks to powers granted by a mystical crow from the afterlife. He’s also exasperatingly slow to accept what’s happened to him, he untangles the bad business Shelly was involved in only really by accident, and he doesn’t even put on a trench coat until the final act. The way that Eric fumbles his way toward retribution is right on the verge of funny — at one point, he gets run over by a truck — but The Crow can’t bring itself to display a sense of humor. Instead, it makes up for its hero’s initial bumbling by raising its gore quotient later on.

It’s a lot to ask, following in the footsteps of a subculture mainstay. If there were any sense of intentionality behind this new Crow , I’d say it’s trying to provide representation for the Incompetent Goths out there — the IncompeGoths who get an illegible stick-and-poke on their cheekbone, who are indifferent to how goofy their single dangly earring looks, and who keep getting sent back to mystical purgatory to be lectured by a supernatural mentor that IMDb assures me has a name, Kronos (Sami Bouajila). But this film isn’t coherent enough for that. Its baddie, Vincent, is an immortal arts patron of sorts who made a deal with the devil but spends the movie trying to track down a cell-phone video he’s worried will get him in trouble. It takes place in an apparently American city where almost every resident has a different international accent. Shelly is desperately on the run from a man with enormous power, reach, and demonic connections, and the first thing she and Eric do when they escape from rehab is go back to her luxury apartment, with its chubby furniture, and get trashed together.

Look, deep thoughts and deeply held emotions aren’t for everyone, and there’s something blissfully empty-headed about the scene in which Shelly, posing with a book at an Instagram-ready picnic with some random friends, informs Eric that she’s reading Rimbaud. If only The Crow were a little more self-aware, it could be a cult classic in its own right — though probably not the kind its makers were hoping for.

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The Crow Review: A Decade-Plus Of Development Results In A Trainwreck Of A Remake

Just awful..

I have spent more than a decade following Hollywood’s failed attempts to remake The Crow . Over the years, there have been a number of filmmakers attached (including Stephen Norrington, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, F. Javier Gutierrez, and Corin Hardy), and the list of potential stars has included Bradley Cooper , Luke Evans , Jack Huston, and Jason Momoa . Its various setbacks resonated like punchlines, and it seemed like the cinema gods we’re sending a message.

Release Date:  August 23, 2024 Directed By:  Rupert Sanders Written By:  Zach Baylin and William Schneider Starring:  Bill Skarsgård, FKA Twigs and Danny Huston Rating:  R for strong bloody violence, gore, language, sexuality/nudity, and drug use Runtime:  111 minutes

But no matter how many setbacks the project encountered, the powers that be in Hollywood evidently demanded that that the film be made – despite the painful memory of Brandon Lee’s tragic death on the set of the 1994 movie and a refusal of support from the original’s director, Alex Proyas .

So was this Dante-esque effort through development hell worth it? Not in the slightest. It’s a train wreck with no raison d'etre apparent beyond IP exploitation.

While the original is a shockingly elegant – albeit dark and violent – revenge tale given life by a charismatic lead, dynamic style and a memorable supporting cast, the reimagining is clumsy, thin, and as shallow as the murky puddle it feels like the whole movie was dragged through. It hinges everything it strives for emotionally on two stars with no on-screen chemistry, which leaves it without any stakes or characters you care about. It shares a title and some aesthetics with the modern classic and that’s all.

This new incarnation of Eric Draven (Bill Skarsgård) is introduced as an introverted, bullied inmate at a rehab facility, and he meets Shelly (FKA twigs) shortly after her own incarceration. The movie assumes that audiences will just click with them as two broken people finding each other who then team up to break out of the hospital and go on the run… but instead, it just drags for the first 40 minutes until we finally get the inciting incident that the audience has been painfully waiting for: Eric and Shelly are killed.

Prior to being arrested and sent to rehab, Shelly is involved with some literal “deal with the devil” individuals, and when she is sent a video from a friend of some evil action going down, a target is put on her head. When she meets Eric and breaks out of rehab, she decides to stay in the same city for some wholly unclear reason, and that leads to her being tracked down and killed along with her boyfriend.

In an afterlife that is basically an abandoned train station, Eric is told by an incredibly clichéd guide (Sami Bouajila) that Shelly’s soul has been sent to hell, but that his sadness connected to her unjust death will give him the opportunity to redeem her. He is immortal on Earth so long as his love for his girlfriend remains pure, and when his soul returns to his body, he sets about finding out what it was that Shelly was involved with – leading him back to a generic, music-loving suit named Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston) who has bargained with Satan for eternal life in exchange for the lives of innocents.

The Crow takes a simple revenge story and makes it a snore.

Revisiting 1994’s The Crow , one notes that it is a lean bit of storytelling. Saving audiences any heavy handed exposition, it immediately jumps into the action with the murder of its protagonist and trusts that you can understand the rules of the supernatural developments (which really aren’t that complicated) as Eric sets out on his righteous post-death rampage.

On the one hand, I can appreciate 2024’s The Crow for thinking that it would be a good idea for us to get to know the principal characters before their death, but it whiffs so terribly that it’s just a bore – and then the start of the second act is infected with lazy explanation of how things works in the afterlife. By the time it gets to the actual meat of the plot, it’s a challenge not to be totally checked out.

Helping nothing is that said plot is rote and trope-ridden, with not a single interesting twist or development to be found in the 111 minute runtime. No minds are going to be blown when Eric’s (wholly unearned) “pure love” for Shelly is challenged by shocking revelation, and there isn’t even a whisper of effort attempting to provide something creative on the antagonist side of the story.

I can’t recall the last time a movie was so incredibly incompetent in building supporting characters.

Danny Huston does the same gravelly-voiced professional evil performance that we’ve seen him put on in what feels like at least a dozen other bad films, but what’s almost impressive about how bad The Crow is rests in its ineptitude establishing supporting characters. There isn’t a single personality that emerges from Vincent Roeg’s team of killers who blindly follow his orders, rendering Eric’s path to the Final Boss stale and repetitive. There are some hardcore deaths that can be appreciated by those with a taste for cinematic gore (and account for that extra half star in my rating), but the violence is also the definition of gratuitous.

But The Crow isn’t exactly rich on Team Eric Draven either. That’s a roster that includes 1) Cliché Spirit Guide In The Train Station Afterlife, 2) Panicky Guy Eric Sees Talking To Shelly At A Club, and 3) Tattoo Artist Whose Place Eric Goes To After His Resurrection. How nobody saw the utter lack of interesting characters as a flaw in the script makes it very difficult to grasp how it got the green light to go into production.

Watching Rupert Sanders ’ The Crow , it’s baffling in general to understand why this film was kept alive in development for so many years. There’s no exciting new angle on the story of Eric Draven that absolutely demanded to be presented on the big screen (nor an exciting screenwriting voice), and the long precession of filmmakers who signed on and then moved on says that there was never a particular vision that needed to be executed. It’s a pointless remake, and perhaps the only good in it is that its existence means we will likely never hear about another one and can go back to simply appreciating the original.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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Lisa Spinelli, the 40-something educator at the center of  Sara Colangelo ’s reflective character study “The Kindergarten Teacher,” is bored out of her mind. Not only bored, but also frustrated for having a great deal to express, yet being cursed with inadequate (or moderate-at-best) creative skills to convey her novel musings through art. She navigates her way through the kind of reality many of us are stuck in. Quietly convinced she was destined for bigger and better things, Lisa leads a mundane life in Staten Island—perhaps the most ignored and forgotten of New York City’s five boroughs—and visibly detests it. The duality of her existence shows in her underwhelmed eyes. As shrugged-off as her hometown is, Lisa impatiently tries to invent ways to keep her cracked spirit whole—an evening poetry class seems to be her only refuge and oasis of sanity. If only she wasn’t such an unoriginal poet with tired metaphors.

A faithful but culturally updated American remake of Nadav Lapid ’s 2014 film of the same name, the closely observed “The Kindergarten Teacher” stars Maggie Gyllenhaal (among the most versatile and underutilized actors of her generation) in the role of the internally split Lisa. Both scrupulous and fittingly hazy, Gyllenhaal captures her character’s outsider-ly state-of-mind with astonishing depth, through the subtlest of details in the way she carries herself. There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly wrong with Lisa’s routine, mind you. If anything, she enjoys a fairly stable and privileged life, however dull. Married to a decent (yet unexciting) man, mothering two teenage children with typical (but non-extreme) teenage issues, and holding a respectable teaching post at a pre-school, Lisa touches the lives of young children at an early age, when it matters the most. But she still drags her feet, finding only a slight spring in her step when she enters through the doors of her extracurricular lecture, taught by a charismatic (if not slightly self-important) poet ( Gael García Bernal ). Once again, Lisa herself is no poet, not really. So she silently blends in, until one day she discovers a pint-sized child genius at her kindergarten (Jimmy, played by Parker Sevak ), who walks around like an old soul trapped in a kid’s body, muttering original verses of poems he has made up on the spot to himself.

Are the impossibly adorable Jimmy’s poems (like the one below) in fact any good? You be the judge of what will surely inspire some debate:

“Anna is beautiful, Beautiful enough for me. The sun hits her yellow house, It’s almost like a sign from God.”

If you’re uncertain, let me assure you that what matters more here is their future potential and superiority to Lisa’s work—impressive enough to get her attention and to even awaken dark, exploitative impulses in her. So Lisa listens to the worst of her instincts, steals Jimmy’s poems one by one and becomes the toast of her evening class, finally claiming the attention she had long thought she deserved. Thanks to Gyllenhaal’s effortless dance around the obsessive corners of her character’s mind, Lisa’s unhealthy fixation assumes a borderline psychotic shape in no time. With every desperate attempt to suck more inspiration out of her little student of Indian descent, the villainous Lisa comes across like a dementor out of a “Harry Potter” novel, preparing to evaporate her underage victim into an empty, lifeless shell.

Except, she persuades herself that she only wants the best for Jimmy, who’s raised by an indifferent family and a frantic babysitter uninterested in (actually, unaware of) the prodigious kid’s unparalleled talents. Taking the matter into her own hands and smugly trusting her white privilege (whether she knows it or not), she goes off the deep end while completely underestimating young Jimmy’s beyond-his-years instincts. (Adults, your kids process more than you give them credit for.) In the film’s final act, which plays like a short thriller that can easily stand on its own, Lisa falls victim to her own arrogance. Neither the freedom-seeking homemaker of “ Puzzle ” nor the manipulative psychopath of “ Gone Girl ,” Lisa embarks on another atypical kind of female journey; one that resolves in a distressing place of indifference. In a lesser version, “The Kindergarten Teacher” would end on a comforting note in which Jimmy’s talents would be embraced by a healthy mentor. But Colangelo (and her source material) sidestep that easy exit for something haunting, uncertain, and several shades darker.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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The Kindergarten Teacher (2018)

Rated R for some language and nudity.

Maggie Gyllenhaal as Lisa Spinelli

Parker Sevak as Jimmy Roy

Gael Garcia Bernal as Simon

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‘The Crow’ Review: Resurrected and It Feels So Bad

Hoping to skate by off moody vibes, this revamp of “The Crow” comic book series seems derived from a flattened, Hot Topic image of the hero.

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By Brandon Yu

In the long and winding road it took to finally get to “The Crow” — with some 15 years of recasts, rewrites, and director switches — the one constant that has remained is that this version would not be a remake of the 1994 film of the same name. It would, the mantra went, instead be a reimagining of the original comic book series by James O’Barr about a man, resurrected from the dead, enacting vengeance on the small-time gangsters who killed him and his fiancée.

It’s a sensible distinction to make for any movie revamp, but here is a particularly important and likely futile disclaimer to evade existing in the shadow not only of a cult classic, but also of a tragic and storied legacy — the accidental on-set death of its star, Brandon Lee — that shrouded and ultimately fueled the original film’s beloved status. “The Crow” of 2024 was never meant to be, couldn’t ever be, a version of that movie, a grittily stylized, rough-edged gothic melodrama whose pain and grief was so deeply absorbed by fans because those very things bled beyond the frame.

That, of course, is fine and all. But ultimately what this version, directed by Rupert Sanders, is spiritually derived from is neither the film nor the comic, but rather the flattened popular image that the film produced — a Hot Topic -style version of alternative consciousness.

“Do you think angsty teens would build shrines to us?” Shelly (FKA twigs) asks Eric (Bill Skarsgard) about their love story, the film’s central romance, whose edgy sensitivity is packaged with as much real feeling as a perfume ad starring Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox. You might think of Shelly’s line as a kind of wink at how Lee’s image became a beacon for brooding cynicism for an entire generation.

But the real punchline is that the film itself is the embodiment of that kind of hollow emo teen worship, throwing vague echoes of “Joker,” “John Wick” and “Constantine” into a laundry machine and hoping faded shades of black eyeliner remain.

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‘the killer’ review: john woo’s remake offers omar sy and new twists, but lacks the poetry of his original.

Nathalie Emmanuel also headlines a new version of the Hong Kong filmmaker's groundbreaking hitman flick, which resets the story in Paris.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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When it first arrived in the U.S. in 1990, John Woo ’s assassin flick The Killer felt like a shot (or rather, several thousand gunshots) to the system. With action scenes choreographed like pyrotechnical ballets, and a gushingly romantic take on love and violence that employed slow motion, dissolves and a seemingly endless supply of flying doves, Woo’s twist on the genre would help to transform it over the next decade — whether in blockbusters or in the work of a major fan like Quentin Tarantino.

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The original The Killer , which starred Chow Yun-Fat as a hitman who gets a dangerous case of cold feet, was totally over-the-top but also perfect in its own right. Why, then, did Woo decide to remake it in English (and a little French) more than three decades later?

One reason, going by this well-executed but rather bland Peacock original, may have been the desire to reset the story in Paris — and Woo definitely exploits the City of Lights to the max here. Not since Tom Cruise pummeled the French capital in Mission Impossible: Fallout have we seen so many chases, fights and shootouts staged against so many breathtaking Parisian backdrops, from the banks of the Seine to all the rooftops offering perfect vantage points for scenes of gunplay and mayhem.

As film nerds and Woo lovers may know, the city was also the setting for Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 hitman masterpiece Le Samouraï , which starred the late Alain Delon and which was the major inspiration for the first The Killer . Both Delon and Chow-Yun Fat played impeccably dressed assassins named Jeff (spelled with one “f” in the French film), who expresses himself much better with bullets than with words, and who’s on the run from both the local authorities and the bad guys who hired him.

The chemistry between Emmanuel and Sy carries much of the narrative weight here, while the other plot additions, including a drug heist gone awry, a corrupt police precinct and an evil Saudi prince (Saïd Taghmaoui) calling the shots, feel as boilerplate as they come. (To Woo’s credit, he makes fun use of Manchester United forward-turned-actor Eric Cantona, playing a mob boss with awful taste in contemporary art.)

Many of these new elements muddy the mechanics of a movie that worked best, in its first installment, when the plot was kept simple and pure. That gave Woo the chance to concentrate almost solely on the action, whereas this version is altogether more chatty, including lots of bonding scenes between Zee and the damsel-in-distress, Jenn (Diana Silvers), whom she spares during an early bloodbath and decides to then protect against all odds.

That said, the maestro does get to show off his chops during a few memorable action sequences — especially a hospital scene where the tension is kept very high and the fight choreography (credited to Jérôme Gaspard) is impeccable. There’s also a very over-the-top opening shootout/car chase along the Seine that captivates our attention from the get-go.

Woo got the ball rolling back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but that ball has gotten bigger and faster, more violent and technically competent — to the point that it seems to have rolled past him by now. If his new movie feels 25 years too late, it’s also a reminder of what made the original so special in its day. Those who manage to discover The Killer through this serviceable remake would be better off revisiting the one that started it all.

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