We are living in the age of recycling. In the past two years, cinema has rebooted, sequeled, or remade about 20 kajillion movies from the 80s-10s. Jurassic Park got a third sequel that nobody wanted but everybody saw. Star Wars got a sixth sequel that felt like a rehash of the first movie. Star Trek got a second sequel to a reboot of a television series that had its own movie series in the 80s. Independence Day got its first ever sequel two decades too late. Ghostbusters got a remake 32 years later. X-Men continues its series that started 16 years ago. The Blair Witch Project even got a Seboot.

It’s not just cinema that feels stuck in a timeloop. Fargo got a television series. Chuck Palheniuk wrote a sequel to Fight Club. The Pixies and De La Soul came out with another album. Guns N Roses is on tour. And that’s just off the top of my head. If it isn’t nailed down, sell it. If it is already sold, make another one just like it.

Continuing the trend is this month’s announcement that a readaptation of the late 80s comic book The Crow is set to start filming next month. And, tonight, there’s a debate between two people who should have been pushed over a yacht 25 years ago*. They’re running for President.

Anyways.

Maybe instead of watching that crap on your television, or in a bar, and getting drunk out of your mind, maybe you should watch The Crow, because nostalgia and misery apparently go hand in hand. Set in Detroit during the heyday of the Devil’s Night fires, Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his girlfriend, Shelley, get evicted by death from their penthouse apartment for complaining about the landlords not doing their fucking job. The following year, Eric comes back with a crow guiding him through his one night of vengence on the people who killed him and the ones who profited from his death.

The big hook for The Crow is that Brandon Lee died on set. In addition, The Crow was the promising beginning of yet another brilliant film career by a dark music video director. Alex Proyas, whose biggest music video to date had been Crowded House’s Don’t Dream Its Over, made The Crow a singular stylish gothic video that felt like Ministry and The Cure had a karate-kicking baby. As a defining moment in certain 1990s subcultures, The Cure was a compulsively rewatchable ode to the style and music genres that became echoed through the dance clubs at midnight.

It’s a well paced revenge movie about hopeless gritty urban environments ruined by rich mob bosses with a penchant for eating eyeballs. Gun socky gets mixed in with melodramatic situations and cheese-filled dialogue in a movie of unrelenting melancholy set between the disco beats. The Crow is a singular piece that actually lands almost every element – lighting, makeup, costumes, sets – pointing to Alex Proyas’ next feature Dark City. If only he hadn’t made that movie about the Egyptian gods with gold blood…

The Crow streams on Netflix

*Maybe they would have turned into Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell**
**Now there’s a remake idea for you: Overboard starring Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, along with all the Trumpkins as the annoying kids that amnesia Hillary is babysitting