Film Review - Madame Web (2024)

Madame Web is the new Columbia Pictures Spider-Verse movie not to have an actual Spider-Man in it and it stars Dakota Johnson as Cassandra Webb who works as a paramedic in New York City but after an accident on the job one day she starts seeing visions of the future and it leads here not just to Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim) but also to 3 young girls (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced and Celeste O’Connor) who could hold a key to the future.

Madame Web is not a bad movie per se but its also one that really does not work, right off the bat when you hear the first lines of dialogue you start to get a bad feeling and it only goes downhill from there, I honestly do not known what went on during this movie’s production but large chunks of it especially in the editing feel off as if there were chunks of this film that were shot and then removed in order to get the runtime down to under 2 hours.

Also this movie has some of the most obvious looping (a process where actors re record their lines in post-production) I’ve seen, one moment you’ll see and hear the actors talk and their lips are matching the dialogue their saying and then you’ll hear them say a completely different line off screen and their voice sounds much cleaner than in the previous scene.

As for Ezekiel the villain well here we go again another Marvel movie another bad villain that is really only here to be a walking, talking, punching bag for the heroes to fight when you probably could’ve done without him completely and the movie wouldn’t have felt that much different and the action in this movie is so pedestrian.

But lastly I have to talk about this movie’s blatant attempt to tie in to the broader Spider-Man universe which falls flatter than an anchor in the sea and during those moments I just went “what, oh my god” or I just laughed at the movie for trying and failing miserably to do this and also they just feel so predictable because anyone who knows anything about Spider-Man and his story will know exactly what is going to happen to those characters.

And so that was Madame Web and look I didn’t hate this movie but it’s also a dead weight that gets projected in front of you and this year is the 100th anniversary of Columbia Pictures and they really need to stop relying on Spider-Man and get back to making rom coms and dramas and great epics like they used to, 1 and a half out of 5.