Dog’s Movie House: “Madame Web” A Cinematic Trainwreck, Not Just A Superhero Film Trainwreck!

“Madame Web” tells the tale of Cassandra “Cassie” Webb (poor Dakota Johnson), a paramedic in 2003 who likes to keep to herself. After an accident in which she nearly dies, her revival comes with the activation of some interesting (and confusing) powers. She can see a few minutes into the future and, later, she can project herself to multiple locations. Now why she has these powers is somewhat explained in a 1973-set prologue set in the Amazon in which her mother, researching special spiders with healing abililties, is killed while pregnant with Cassie. Before she dies, a rare “spider-tribe” of natives has one of the spiders bite her, allowing her to live just long enough to birth Cassie, apparently transfering the spider’s special abilities to her infant daughter. (If I’m exhausted just by typing this, imagine what it’s like to watch on screen.)

Anyhow, Cassie’s visions revolve around three young women who happen to live in her apartment along with a mysterious man with unusual abilities trying to kill them. The man is Ezekiel Sims (a wasted Tahar Rahim) the man who killed Cassie’s mother thirty years prior for possession of the super-spider. Exekiel is also having dreams/visions of these three women, only they take place in the future where the women all have different spider-powers and are going to kill him. In his mind, it’s do unto others before they do unto you. It’s up to Cassie to protect the young ladies (who act like entitled brats most of the time) and figure out her own powers before Ezekiel kills them all.

Yuck!

That is as clinical as I can get when it comes to analyzing this film. “Madame Web” doesn’t even qualify as a so-bad-it’s-good kind of a film. It’s just bad and fails on just about every level. This is the kind of film where the ADR (automated dialogue replacement) is so amatuerish that Exekiel’s lines don’t match the motions of Rahim’s mouth most of the time. Not that the dialogue was any great shakes to begin with as the script by four writers, including two who wrote the script for the aforementioned “Morbius” is a mostly incoherent mess of exposition and awful dialogue. It’s a classic case of the “tell, not show” method of storytelling that drives me nuts.

First time feature director S.J. Clarkson has some interesting ideas for the film, especially concerning the way Cassie’s powers manifest. Her visions are presented as disorienting flashbacks that are meant to unsettle the audience as much as the character. That would be great in a much better film, but in “Madame Web” the excercise grows tedious quickly. The three young woman (played by talented actors Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor) are so one-note that they barely register. And poor Rahim’s villain is even less compelling then the girls he’s after. It doesn’t help that he looks like a cheap Spider-Man clone who none but the most devoted of comic book fans will recognize. The only person who comes off well here is Adam Scott as Cassie’s paramedic partner, one Ben Parker. Those of you who know that name know that this is none other than a young version of Peter Parkers fabled Uncle Ben. At least he and Johnson have some chemistry and their scenes together have a natural feel.

Otherwise, “Madame Web” is a tattered, nearly unwatchable mess. Which brings me to another point. As a fan of comic books and comic book movies, I get a little tired of having to defend the sub-genre as a legitimate art form. Normally I can come up with more than my share of cogent arguments in favor of the childhood stories with which I grew up. “Madame Web” makes my arguements against superhero fatigue all the more difficult to make, and that’s frustrating as hell. Do me a favor Sony: make some good comic book movies for a change and stop giving me reasons to defend the medium from the presumably exhausted general public at large! 1 Out Of 5 On Kendog’s Barkometer! So Sayeth The Kendog!

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