THIS REVIEW CONTAINS JUST… SO MANY SPOILERS. BE CAREFUL.
by Jarrod Jones. Madame Web is as bad as you’ve heard, possibly worse than even that, yet there were few moments where I was not thoroughly engaged by it. Of course, I was engaged by how inept, broken, tedious, and poorly performed it was, but c’mon. One must get their perverse kicks whenever they can.
I can’t get Madame Web out of my head, yet I’m struggling to recall a single moment from it. I remember Dakota Johnson playing Cassie Webb, a paramedic so socially hostile that she makes a small child feel stupid for thanking her for saving his mother. In one scene, Cassie ruins Peter Parker’s name reveal at his mother’s baby shower (lest we forget that this is technically a Spider-Verse movie), but by then, it’s because she’s struggling with burgeoning spider-déjà vu powers, which makes sitting through things like baby showers virtually impossible.
I remember she flew off to Peru at one point despite being a high-profile fugitive for kidnapping three teenage girls (Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, and Isabela Merced). The reason Cassie goes to Peru is because that’s where her mother (Kerry Bishé) died and she was born. Cassie learns she acquired these powers when her mother, dying from a gunshot wound incurred after finding a spider in the Amazon, was spider-bit during childbirth. (There were Amazonian spider-men all over the place during this scene, but that’s a bushel of beets I’m not digging into right now.) Cassie flies back in time for the film’s climax, successfully evading international customs and the NYPD. I remember it goes on this way.
One thing about Madame Web I can’t remember, and it’s the most important part of the story — the sole reason Johnson abducts Sweeney, O’Connor, and Merced in the first place — is why the villain, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), wants these girls dead. I mean, I know he has nightmares (like Cassie, he has spider-prediction powers) where they, in form-fitting super-spider outfits, beat him up until he dies. Zeke acquired his superpowers and wealth from a spider bite (how? We don’t ask “how“) and, naturally, wants to stay alive. So he’s on the defensive, going so far as to seduce an NSA agent and, post-coitus, exposits his insane dreams while extracting information about an experimental piece of camera-hacking technology from her via his poisonous touch.
But why do these girls want Ezekiel dead? And when do they get their spider powers? The sequel? That seems a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it? There’s so much Madame Web wants to show us that it forgets to toss in the important stuff, like motivation and reason. There’s no reasoning in Madame Web, yet that makes it compelling to watch — if you’re into this sort of mind-numbing dross. Which I am.
Did I mention Madame Web is a period piece? It is. It’s set in 2003 because that’s when Spider-Man was born. It was a time of Mountain Dew Code Red, American Idol, and Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” all referenced in this movie, the latter of which was incorporated into the plot. The internet wasn’t what it would become, so Zeke hires a hacker (I think she’s a hacker? Anyway, she’s played by Zasie Mamet) to use the NSA equipment to find the girls so he can, just so we’re clear, murder them. Cassie sees some of the ways Zeke might go about killing them, too, and they are, putting it mildly, rude.
We spend more time than is reasonable watching Ezekiel pace behind the hacker, barefoot, as she works, issuing ADR’d threats (most of his lines were recorded after shooting wrapped) that sound like they were recited by Tommy Wiseau. When he isn’t threatening this poor woman, I think he tells her at one point that he’ll give her a fortune. Just like that: “I’ll give you a fortune.” I can’t figure out their working relationship: is this hacker working under duress or what? She gets a cheese platter in one scene, which is something most people don’t get when they work for assholes. Anyway, Madame Web and the Spider-Girls end up killing Ezekiel in the finale, in full defiance of fate and prophecy, but we never see this hacker character again. I hope she wiped her fingerprints off that NSA equipment; I’d hate to think she got in trouble for all this.
It should be noted that Ezekiel dresses in a bad Spider-Man suit. Bad, as in, the color scheme is reversed — black, with red webs, which feels like a poke at the animated Spider-Man, Miles Morales, who dresses this way yet who is good. Ezekiel has wall-crawling abilities, but Cassie does not. I think he web-thwips like Spider-Man, too, but I don’t remember because the action scenes are horrific to watch and are also edited into mush. If he does, I wonder if he has organic webbing like Tobey Maguire did in those Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies Sony used to make when their superhero offerings weren’t compromised botch jobs that feel like they were made just to be deleted for a tax write-off.
I remember Mike Epps showing up for a time, and I became irrationally excited by this. Mike Epps is an undervalued comedic talent, and he’s developed a warmth to his charm that director S.J. Clarkson utilizes well enough. If I remember anything from Madame Web tomorrow, it will be this.
One more: Adam Scott made a pretty good Ben Parker. He’s no Martin Sheen or Cliff Robertson, but I’ll take it!
1.5 / 10
Madame Web is in wide release now.
Directed by S.J. Clarkson.
Screenplay by Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker, and S. J. Clarkson
Cinematography Mauro Fiore.
Starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, Isabela Merced, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, and Adam Scott.
Produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
Rated PG-13 for silly spider-fights, which feels a bit harsh.
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