Madame Web review – no need to get entangled

For those especially curious, no Madame Web is not the biggest atrocity to ever get spewed out of the comic book movie factory. That would be in some alternate universe where Dark Phoenix, Electra, Jonah Hex, Batman & Robin and the 2015 Fantastic Four films don’t exist.

Madame Web is plenty of things — mediocre, dull, boring, unnecessary and goofy — but the worst? No, it’d need to be especially committed to something at a high level for that accolade as opposed to simply immediately forgettable.

The opening act doesn’t instill much confidence as a very pregnant woman (Kerry Bishé) is in the Amazon in search of a rare spider. She’s betrayed and clinging to life when an impressively awful CGI man clad in wraps to convey a spider web carries her to a spider cave. The CGI in this sequence does not instill much confidence.

At least director S.J. Clarkson (The Defenders) offers an immediate spoiler that Madame Web is not going to accused of style over substance. Not that substance is in plentiful supply either.

Fast forward to 2003. Paramedic Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is barreling through the streets of New York with her partner, Ben Parker (Adam Scott). If the name Ben Parker gets your spidey-sense tingling, it’s not by accident. Like the majority of films starring a woman in the lead, Cassie is amazing at everything. Her male peers are flush with compliments over her competence. All while Cassie acts like a gunslinger who’s too cool for school.

While making the rounds, Cassie starts seeing a tragedy unfold before snapping back moments later before the incident occurs. A superhero Final Destination film actually sounds pretty awesome. For the first 40 minutes, screenwriters Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless (the Morbius writing duo) and Claire Parker & Clarkson make this concept work.

Annoyingly, even for a comic book movie, some tropes like the black guy getting killed first remain intact. But how else would Cassie learn about her powers?

She gets a larger spoiler about a mysterious man, Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim), killing three innocent teenagers. Cassie doesn’t know that Ezekiel has been plagued by nightmares for years that the girls will kill him in a decade. Rather than wait to be murdered, Ezekiel takes a more proactive approach and has finally tracked them down.

Good thing for the girls that Cassie happens to be on their subway car. She rounds up Julia (Sydney Sweeney, Anyone But You), Anya (Isabela Merced, Sweet Girl) and Mattie (Celeste O’Connor, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) and barely evades Ezekiel’s attack.

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The film is intended to be a showcase for Johnson, who hits the ceiling of her onscreen charisma relatively early on. Johnson is just not that engaging of a lead and acts as if she can’t wait to fire her agent after filming stops.

Sweeney goes against type playing the demure, bashful member of the trio is a fun shift. Merced and O’Connor make more compelling co-leads than Johnson suggesting Madame Web would have been a better Spider-Women movie. Sweeney, Merced and O’Connor don’t get much individual screen time and are effectively just the Huey, Dewey and Louie to Johnson’s Uncle Scrooge. And it would have allowed for more superhero action.

Just to confuse audiences not familiar with Ezekiel, Clarkson opts to have him decked out in a quasi-Spider-Man costume. Ironically, at other points in the film, Clarkson has Ezekiel in his basic comic book look or a suit jacket and pants running around barefoot.

Maybe this was simply to have someone in costume. Plotwise, it was savvy to have Cassandra protecting future superheroes Spider-Woman (Julia), Spider-Girl (Anya) and Spider-Woman (Mattie). And cuts down on the costume budget. There are some glimpses of some moderately accurate comic book costumes, but that’s more for trailer purposes to sell the idea of a superhero movie.

By the midway point, the premise starts to lose steam. Mattie, Julia and Anya have to act like clueless teenagers just to put themselves in danger and have Cassie bail them out again. Cassie’s detour to the Amazon feels like a needless subplot especially thanks to its cheesy payoff.

And it becomes increasingly more of a stretch that this otherwise completely competent ruthless killer Ezekiel can’t take out three teens and their barely older chaperone. While a Spider-Man cameo doesn’t match up timeline wise, another hero just providing a credible obstacle would have been useful particularly in the final act.

Madame Web is misguided, but actually could have been a worthwhile Spider-Man spin-off for Sony. The script needed some life and spark beyond Spider-Man-like boogeyman incompetently coming after four women with no powers and a more interested lead than Johnson. This might not even make the cut for the Top 10 worst comic book movie list, but that doesn’t mean you need a precog to advise to not spend the time on it. Unless you’re sleep deprived and need a cinematic sleep aid.

Rating: 3 out of 10

Photo Credit: Sony Pictures

You can now pick up Madame Web on 4k Blu-Ray on Amazon.

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