By Keith Walther | RLGR
Following in the footsteps of last year’s female led superhero film, “The Marvels,” this is another box office disaster that fails to hold viewers’ attention. From a horrendous screenplay that went through significant rewrites to incompetent direction to one of the worst casts ever assembled, you don’t need special powers of clairvoyance to see that “Madame Web” needs an exterminator. This is the fourth film of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSMU), preceded by “Venom,” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” and the atrociously bad “Morbius.” Hopefully, this will be the last.
Set in 2003, 30 years after her mother died under strange circumstances during childbirth in the Amazon jungle, Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is living her life as a New York City paramedic the way she wants, alone and detached. After a near death experience, she starts having strange visions of the future, leading her on a collision course with three teenage girls, Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor). Unfortunately, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) is a bad Spider-Man in a cheaper looking outfit on the same course.
Looking to alter his own future of a violent death, Ezekiel seeks to kill the three teens before they come into the power he observes in his visions. As Cassie seeks to understand her past in order to manipulate the future, the girls must trust one another and rely on Cassie’s fortune telling to keep them one step ahead of Spider-baddie.
Sadly, the only winner to come out of this boring origin story is Pepsi. Heavy and obvious product placement throughout makes “Madame Web” seem more like an overlong Pepsi commercial than it does a coherent film production. Director S.J. Clarkson, who has only ever directed for television, should have stayed with the small screen. She is clearly in over her head with a big budget feature film like this, failing to achieve the most fundamental of filmmaking techniques such as constructing cohesive and purposeful scenes. The film from start to finish is an absolute mess with some of the worst character development ever to be found in film. In the opening scenes, the audience learns that the only motive the bad guy has for becoming a murderous villain is that nobody helped his family when they were in need, and that’s it. With such a weak backstory, viewers quickly understand they’re in for a long, arduous journey.
Clarkson’s attention to detail is absolutely abysmal, creating obvious filmmaking gaffs, plot holes, and inexcusable errors that make the word amateur seem almost too kind. Like the sun shining brightly in a NYC window at 5am when the sun has never risen there prior to 6am. Or a scene that features “Toxic” by Britney Spears being played in a diner in 2003, even though that song wasn’t released until 2004. Or fireworks acting like powerful explosive devices that punch a hole through a solid brick wall. Then there are countless continuity errors that show the disregard and laziness with which this movie was made. The problems extend to sound editing, where sounds were significantly overproduced, making a popping balloon sound like a high-powered gunshot. Even the cinematography was awkward, trying overly hard to incorporate web-like images in almost every scene.
With the dialogue writing as bad as it was, there’s little the cast can do to overcome it, but having two of the worst actresses in Hollywood certainly doesn’t help. Dakota Johnson, known for her revealing performances in the “Fifty Shades” movies, offers up another emotionless, vapid performance in the lead role. Her line delivery was head shakingly poor and robotic, almost as if she knew how bad the screenplay was as she was shooting her scenes. In fact, if her actions on Saturday Night Live and leaving her agency are any indication, even Dakota understands how bad this movie really is. Then there’s Sydney ‘dead eyes’ Sweeney, whose lack of talent was on full display just recently with “Anyone But You,” arguably the worst film of 2023. Once again, she shows a complete inability to believably portray her character, this time as a sweet, innocent teenage girl. Sweeney offers no depth to her character whatsoever, simply staring in a glazed way with those half-open, vacant eyes and delivering her lines with zero inflection. It’s clear these actresses are only suited for the B-movie circuit.
The villain is played by Tahar Rahim, a French actor who recently had a fairly prominent role in “Napoleon.” A majority of his scenes were blatantly dubbed over, creating an oddly mismatched sound whenever he spoke compared to the rest of the cast. This was extremely distracting and not only takes away from his performance, but also from the performances of his scene counterparts. It doesn’t help that he was not at all intimidating or credible as the antagonist.
If you thought “Morbius” was bad, this may be even worse. “Madame Web” is another strong early contender for worst picture of the year, if not worst Marvel movie made to date. Like a venomous spider bite can sometimes cause necrosis of the skin, this movie may cause soul and brain necrosis. Not even the action is entertaining, it is dull and pointless for the entire two-hour runtime. It’s recommended that you put as much time and money into watching this film as the effort that was put into making it, which is zero.
This movie earns
