MADAME WEB
Mystic Meh
RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 116 minutes
Director SJ Clarkson
Cast Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Tahar Rahim
Either emboldened by the seemingly critic-proof success of the two Venom films or seeking a new cinematic low after the messy Morbius, Sony’s Spider-manadjacent universe continues to waste its opportunities.
The idea of an origin story for an elderly blind psychic who spends most of her time in a life-support system always seemed a confounding topic for a studio that has struggled to exploit its grip on these corners of Spidey’s world. And it proves to be fuel for an overwrought, forced and often unintentionally hilarious run-around.
Many elements of Madame Web make you wonder whether the quality control department was on holiday. While SJ Clarkson has directed solid superhero entertainment before (see Jessica Jones), even she can’t rescue a dreadful script set in 2003 that might as well be a film made back in the days before the MCU raised the bar.
Dakota Johnson doesn’t so much phone in as text her performance as Cassandra “Cassie” Webb, a paramedic with some serious boundaries after growing up as a foster child following her mother’s death in childbirth – a death that occurred while she was studying a mystical spider with healing properties in the Amazon.
An attempt to save her resulted Cassie gaining the ability to see into the future, which comes in handy when she’s pressed into saving three teenagers (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’connor, saddled with archetypes instead of characters), who are destined to become Spider-powered people themselves, and are being hunted by Tahar Rahim’s Ezekiel Sims.
Yet another poor outing from Sony, it’s the sort of Marvel product that the wider cinematic community would be better off avoiding, even in our multiverseobsessed times. James White
Sweeney, Merced and O’connor trained for hours in their suits, for scenes that make up roughly 30 seconds of the film.