Avenged (2013) Movie Review – Is It Too Much Like The Crow?

Written and directed by Michael S. Ojeda, Avenged tells the story of a deaf girl, Zoe (Amanda Adrienne) who — on a road trip across the country to live with her boyfriend — gets raped, brutalized, and murdered by a racist group of rednecks in the desert. Then she comes back to life to avenge her death by killing her attackers and anyone in her way.

Does that sound familiar? If it does, you should be thinking of 1994’s The Crow. Now, I don’t want to dwell on this influence too much, but since the filmmakers and/or distributors saw fit to put CraveOnline’s quote on the box, I figured I’d at least share that: “The Female Crow we’ve been waiting for!”

Buy Avenged here.

Have you been waiting for a female version of The Crow? I know I sure haven’t been, but once I read that I suddenly felt like I had a void in my life. Although there are blatant similarities between these two movies, I don’t think I’d go so far as to say Avenged is as good as The Crow, because, well, it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good and the acting is, for the most part, really good (especially Rodney Rowland as bad-guy pack leader, Trey), but c’mon, The Crow!

One thing I’ll say is true, Avenged tops The Crow in terms of gore and showing Zoe’s post-resurrection decomposition. But the bleak, slummy inner-city grunge vibe isn’t here, neither is the killer soundtrack, all of which is deliberate; really, who wants to make a carbon copy of the Alex Proyas movie?

Another difference is the manner in which Zoe is brought back from the dead. A Native American finds her corpse and then performs a ritual to bring her back, unfortunately he’s too late and an evil Apache warrior spirit enters her body, giving her great combat skills. I guess things need to be spelled out a bit more clearly for today’s audiences.

Avenged doesn’t just draw upon The Crow for influence; this is a female-driven revenge movie after all, so we can also find parallels with Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left and Meir Zarchi’s I Spit On Your Grave. It goes without saying that there are some pretty cool kills scenes here, and for those alone Avenged is worth the viewing.

The Verdict:

Although Avenged is extremely derivative, there’s enough blending of the influences for it to stand on its own. At the very least it’s entertaining and brings a modern horror edge to the story. Would I watch it again? You betcha! So it goes without saying that you probably should watch it at least once.