Quick Take: Madame Web should've been a fun and fantastical origin story for a dynamic comic character with real spin-off potential. Instead it’s a mishmash of barely interesting plot points, disjointed visual trickery, and underwhelming performances. More than anything else, Madame Web proves it’s not enough to throw all the “expected” set pieces in a movie, you actually need to know what to do with them.

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Official Synopsis: Cassandra Webb develops the power to see the future. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she forges a relationship with three young women bound for powerful destinies, if they can all survive a deadly present.

Director: S.J. Clarkson

Writers: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker, S.J. Clarkson

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, Adam Scott

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Madame Web, Sony’s third standalone spin-off of a Marvel comic character, opened the door for the studio to fully reimagine the origins of its titular character and set the stage for robust worldbuilding in its Spider-Man Universe. The Cassandara Webb of the comics is an elderly woman, with a neuromuscular disease, connected to a life support system that resembles a spider web. She’s fully in control of her clairvoyance and precognition.  Webb’s an exceptionally powerful mutant and infrequent supporting character in the Spider-Man comic book series. There’s very little known of her beginnings. When carving a lane for future stories, it doesn’t get much better than having firm grounding in source material but an otherwise clear field to play. 

There’s something to be said for nostalgia in movie styling (we won't talk about those reshoot blunders). Setting a story in the recent past opens the way for the sleight-of-hand of soft revisionist storytelling often beneficial when telling a story with supernatural elements. For audiences, everything feels familiar and contemporary but the edges are just blurry enough to make way for a world full of magic, mystery, and untold danger existing alongside the mundane. What Madame Web gets right(ish) is blending an intentionally pulp-esque vibe into a recognizable version of the contemporary New York City circa 2003. The story moves at a digestible (and thankfully relatively quick) pace of a thriller. So it’s a shame that absolutely nothing else; not direction, editing, character arcs, visual effects, cast performances, or story direction, amounts to more than a “comic movie” checklist neither the screenwriters nor the director knew how to navigate.

The movie opens with a flashback, because of course it does, of a pregnant Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) deep in the Peruvian Amazon in 1973. She’s on the hunt for a spider said to have miraculous healing properties. She’s whip smart, driven, and desperate. So desperate she misses all the glaring red flags that her impatient head of security, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), isn’t really there to protect her waving in her face. Through hamfisted dialogue, a lore info-dump about a secretive indigenous people with powers, known as Las Aranas, (that would’ve carried more weight as naturally occurring revelations), and scenes of a furtive tent search practically lifted from Tomb Raider, it’s obvious Sims’ intends to acquire the spider for his own ends. The action sequences that follow shortly after the expected doublecross are a reminder that staging and filming action and stunts is a skill not all directors possess. Director S.J. Clarkson relies on quick cuts, odd camera angles, and bouncing shots of rustling foliage and blurred glimpses of people leaping from great heights to simulate action and fast-moving “spider people” traveling through the trees coming to the rescue. It’s the first sign, of many, that Madame Webb’s practical and visual effects are a detriment to an already poorly conceived storyline. And although the flashback is a smart entry point for Webb’s origin story,