Madame Web Review
Theatrical Movie Review - Superhero
I like to support women-led stories, particularly in genres that typically center on men. In the vast number of comic book movies that have been made, only a handful have featured women, so I knew I was going to go see S.J. Clarkson’s Madame Web, despite a lot of negative early reactions. And now I’m about to add my own negative reaction to the pile because this movie is depressingly bad.
Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic. Following a near-death experience, she begins to have experiences where she sees flashes of events that have yet to happen. When she’s on the subway and sees that three girls are about to be murdered by a man in a spider suit (Tahar Rahim), she forces them to leave with her. When they reach safety, Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) realize that they are all connected.
I am struggling to explain how much I disliked this movie. I try hard to find positives in every film that I watch because I know that people put time and energy into creating something entertaining, and even if I don’t like it, there is almost always something to appreciate in that effort. But aside from a couple of unintended laughs, I hated nearly everything about Madame Web.
I will be the first to admit that I have limited knowledge about film craft, particularly when it comes to editing. I know when films feel well put together, but I would be hard-pressed to explain why. But I can look at “Madame Web” and recognize that it is poorly edited. There are relentless cuts in most scenes mixed with genuinely baffling camera angles. Visually, it is nearly unwatchable.
The characters are incredibly flat. I didn’t like a single person in the movie. The script is terrible, and it seems like the performers knew it because I didn’t think a single performance had any soul to it. Rahim’s performance, in particular, was hampered by re-recorded lines that looked and sounded awful. Dakota Johnson has said that the final script was vastly different from what she was presented when she joined the project, so lackluster performances feel unsurprising.
Speaking of the script, this is one of the messiest, most incoherent scripts I’ve ever seen put to screen. I was struggling to write a recap of this movie because there are about seven movies in this movie, and none have any actual action or story. There is no team building, the lore is crammed in without care, and the emotional core is devoid of emotion.
What makes me the angriest about all of this is that this will be yet another film that some will point to as to why it’s bad to focus on women-led stories in comic book movies. But instead of making all superhero movies better, we’ll just get fewer movies directed by and starring women. That said, no one should go see this movie. It’s terrible, and we should not reward that.
