de facto film reviews 2 stars

It’s no secret that Sony’s universe of Spider-Man spinoffs have not exactly lit a fire among audiences. While the Venom films have had strong success, they were surrounding by a gonzo dual performance from star Tom Hardy. The other spinoffs for Spider-Man villains have floundered greatly. Morbius has gone down in infamy as a notorious flop that has been endlessly ridiculed online and memed into oblivion. The exact same can be said for this year’s Madame Web, which was DOA before it was released, thanks to an unintentionally hilarious trailer that gave the world the line “he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died”. All these spinoffs for characters that are primarily Spider-Man villains, yet never share the screen with the web-slinger and are not even treated like the comic book villains that they are. Instead, these films all feel as if they’ve wandered in from the year 2003; before the comic book genre fully hit its stride. Not to mention, they all are stuck with clear post-production meddling, evident in the trailers for each film which showcases full scenes and lines of dialogue that are nowhere to be found in the final product. These films have all gotten the same treatment that ultimately killed Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man franchise just two films in. Reports have stated that Sony is no longer interested in making more of these spinoffs, which makes their latest film, centered on villain Kraven the Hunter, feel worthless before it even comes out. Now that the film is here — after being delayed nearly two years since principal photography wrapped, there isn’t much for audiences to get excited about.

Courtesy Sony Pictures

Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is the son of Russian crime boss, Nikolai (Russell Crowe), who spends much of his upbringing attempting to side step his fathers plans for him to join the family business. When in Africa on a hunting trip, Sergei is ruthlessly attacked by a Lion and nearly dies. With the help of Calypso (Ariana Debose), the daughter of a voodoo priestess, Sergei is revived using a magical potion that gives him animal-like abilities and super strength. Sergei flees his father’s care, leaving his younger brother, Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), alone to deal with their weakness-hating dad. Flash forward 15 years later, Sergei has been silently taking down drug lords and criminals under the mysterious guise of “the Hunter” AKA Kraven.

Director JC Chandor, known for dark adult dramas such as A Most Violent Year, Margin Call and Triple Frontier, is easily the most accomplished filmmaker to join one of these Sony Marvel spinoff films, but still struggles to uphold the thin material he’s given. Despite saddling together a group of a-list talent, Kraven the Hunter once again feels heavily broken apart and stitched together in post, resulting in a film that, while occasionally fun and embraces its own goofiness, feels like the result of too many cooks in one kitchen. The film opens with a decent action sequence set in a Russian prison before flashing back to Kraven’s origin for what feels like a sizable chunk of the 127-minute runtime. Early on it feels apparent that the narrative has been jumbled around as the extended flashback lasts almost 30 minutes straight. By the time we come back to Kraven, we’ve almost forgotten where we left him in the opening. We can sense Chandor’s initial take on the material with a crime noir twist on a superhero origin story, but that take is heavily watered down by exhausting genre cliches.

Boasting a hard R-rating, Chandor allows Kraven to embrace the grimier, pulpier aspects of the character from the page. While this is far from an accurate depiction of the Marvel villain — he’s not remotely a villain here aside from his moralistic take on mercilessly killing bad guys, there is an attempt to make him a likable on-screen hero (anti-hero?). Chandor’s action sequences are easily the most inspired bits of the film, but the CGI effects become more and more unwieldy as the film progresses. The third act becomes a hodgepodge of muddy-looking CG animals, routine villain/hero showdowns and generally uninspired staging.

Courtesy Sony Pictures

Aaron Taylor-Johnson does a serviceable enough job as Kraven, with 12-pack abs and a badass attitude that makes him an easy hero for audiences to root for. Taylor-Johnson isn’t phoning it in either, he gives this character enough life and delivers a compelling performance that you wouldn’t mind seeing in more films, but this isn’t a strong enough film to warrant coming back for more. Oscar-winner Ariana Debose is given some horrendous dialogue, notably the line that made me audibly cackle, “my grandmother died on that trip and I never saw her again”. Debose doesn’t have much meat to pull from the script, sporting some highly questionable wigs and is resorted to spouting endless amounts of exposition, much of which is presented through some shoddy ADR dubbing. The bizarre creative decisions don’t just end there. Alessandro Nivola plays the evil scientist, Aleksei Sytsevich AKA The Rhino, who leans heavily into the campy aspect of the film. Nivola is a blast to watch, but not always for the right reasons. There is a moment about halfway through the film where the character is told some unfortunate news and Nivola’s reaction is only what I can describe as a future meme culture staple. Nivola’s performance matches Paul Giamatti’s loopy turn as the villain in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It’s a performance that is simply… fascinating.

Fred Hechinger’s Dmitri has vaguely unspecified abilities to perfectly imitate any voice, which finds him singing cover songs at his father’s local hangout. However, the actor is simply lip syncing to the already existing song. Not a bad idea in theory, but — yet again — the rough ADR makes the choice come across as random, especially given that this character isn’t said to have any actual powers and his brother was only given powers from a special serum. Russell Crowe is having an absolute blast as Kraven’s big bag dad. Sporting a “Moose and Squirrel” level Russian accent, the Oscar-winner devours every ounce of scenery at his disposal. The scenes between him and Taylor-Johnson are some of the best scenes in the film as these two actors fully commit themselves to the pulpy noir stylings found in the script. Christopher Abbott’s B-villain, The Foreigner, an assassin who can reverse time for only several seconds, feels like he wandered in from the set of Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor.

Courtesy Sony Pictures

Kraven the Hunter is not some disaster on the level of Morbius or Madame Web. There is an overall sense of pulpy fun that’s backed by a game performance by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and a meme-ready villainous turn by Alessandro Nivola. You can feel some of the seeds of director JC Chandor’s original crime noir-tinged take on the material, but it’s overshadowed by an amusingly stupid script, bizarre creative choices and post-production meddling that makes the entire film feel uninspired. If this is the end of Sony’s Spider-Man villain spinoffs, it’s only fitting that it goes out, not with a bang, but with one big shrug.

Kraven the Hunter is now playing in theaters.