By Nicholas Vermaaten, Contributor

[Sony Pictures; 2024]

Rating: 2/10

To no one’s surprise, Madame Web is yet another addition to the Sony Spider-Man Cinematic Universe, or SSCU, which ended up being both a financial and critical disaster, one whose only positive are the memes coming out ridiculing this project.

Madame Web follows Cassie Web (Dakota Johnson), an EMT who after an emergency response accident acquires the power of clairvoyance. With this power, she must protect three teenage girls from Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) as he attempts to kill them all before his visions of being defeated by the girls become a reality. 

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The film uses this narrative to juggle topics of motherhood, familial ties, and even Patriot Act surveillance politics. But, as one could expect from the follow-up to Morbius, none of these themes are naturally developed, and really only exist to pad out the film’s runtime.

The film’s writing is likely its worst aspect. There is an interest in callbacks to the Spider-Man mythos throughout, with characters, shots, and motifs from previous movies being referenced with the subtlety of a brick to the face. This corporate nostalgia extends to the dialogue as well, with lines like “He’s a spider…person” and “Once you accept responsibility, great power will follow” being horribly implemented into this already shoddily constructed screenplay.

Usually, I take this segment of my reviews to highlight a performance that stood above the rest, but unfortunately, this film’s cast reads off their lines with the same energy and emotion with which one would read off their shopping list. 

Rahim does differ from his cast mates in this regard. He is kind of hamming it up within his handful of villainous monologues and awkwardly choreographed fight scenes, but it’s a kind of “hamminess” that still feels phoned in, one which doesn’t feel like the decision of Rahim. It feels instead like the demand of a studio exec trying to force energy into a production sorely lacking it. 

The cinematography is also terrible. There seems to be an obsession with dark visuals within the SSCU, as intense shadows and heavy desaturation are a constant throughout. To add to the mess of grays and blacks, the film also decides to liberally use quick zooms and shaky camera in scenes to create a sense of “rising tension”. 

In combination with the film’s terrible action setpieces, this creates some impressively headache-inducing moments. This is at its absolute worst in the film’s first action scene, which involves Ezekiel holding up a handful of scientists with a pistol. In an attempt to intensify the moment, the camera does three rapid quick zooms in a single shot, creating a feeling of visual whiplash and physical nausea in the audience. While none of the following action scenes are quite as horrible as the first, the quick zoom effect is repeated throughout to mostly terrible results.

Madame Web is yet another tedious and horrible addition to the SSCU, proving to me (and many others) that superhero fatigue has fully set in. Don’t watch it.