Madame Web (2024)

Score: 3 / 5

Getting back on my soapbox: In a time when it's cool to hate new installments of long-running franchises, nuance has all but vanished from conversations about film. Especially when it comes to superhero movies in the consistently flooded market of the genre. So I tuned out the vociferous outcry against Sony's latest Spider-man-adjacent title and went to see it with no expectations other than what little I remember of the character from the comics. And while its rushed story, heavyhanded exposition, and frustratingly messy climax do hinder its impact, the film is surprisingly delightful in its mid-2000s aesthetics and noir-thriller approach to its feminist story. Too, and perhaps more importantly, it reimagines its protagonist in such a fresh way that multiple times during the film, I forgot it was a "superhero" movie.

Madame Web refers to Cassie Webb (short for Cassandra, referencing the cursed Trojan prophet), a paramedic in Queens in 2003, who after a near-death situation begins having precognitive visions. Many of them are violent, of course, and no one believes her, but this isn't just Happy Death Day in the Spiderverse; she is inexplicably mentally tied to three teenage girls who are being hunted and attacked by a menacing man in a black bodysuit. As Cassie tries to make sense of her visions and rescue the girls from Grand Central Terminal -- in a breakneck sequence of earned suspense and action -- we learn that their pursuer also has the ability to see the future, bestowed to him by a rare Peruvian spider along with strength and rapid healing. He foresaw that these young women would kill him, and is now out to kill them first.

We know from the introduction scene that Cassie's mother was in the Peruvian Amazon thirty years prior looking for just such special spiders. It's all much ado about precious little, but the screenwriters -- a whole committee, it seems -- seem determined to make their Sony Spiderverse into its own thing, and this movie kind of fits the bill for an origin story of sorts for the whole shebang. By its conclusion, it seems to have established not only the origin of spiders with superhuman toxins, but it has also established one of the older and more mysterious characters in Spider-man lore as a sort of Professor Xavier, complete with retinue of Spider-girls ready to take on crime in the city. Clunky and expository as most of their dialogue may be in the film, the screenplay is narratively doing a hell of a lot, actually.

The feature film debut of longtime television director S.J. Clarkson allows that screenplay to be what it is, focusing her efforts on eliciting dedicated, grounded performances from her cast. Dakota Johnson plays Cassie with a frustrated world-weariness that authentically captures the angsty urban young adult in the mid-aughts. It's telling that Clarkson worked on Jessica Jones, because Johnson here comfortably handles the deadpan, wry humor that defined that character. The teens (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor) are a fun and funny trio of energy, while their antagonist (Tahar Rahim) is legitimately scary in his handsome, brooding menace. More importantly, Clarkson and her editor use the frantic, stylized techniques of the period to frame the action and especially the scenes of precognition, making the whole experience feel like a blast from twenty years ago. More than once I wondered if Sam Raimi was part of this team, because it's got his energy all over it. And for a film that knows exactly what it is, what it wants to do, and why it's doing it, this is pretty solid stuff. I will champion any superhero film these days that doesn't overuse CGI to make a spectacle of world-ending, apocalyptic climaxes. This movie keeps things simple and straightforward and grounded, breezy and pleasant as it stays focused on itself. It's just out of time with the current state of the art, which is probably why so many people are writing it off.