MADAME WEB - Mark Reviews Movies

Madame Web, Columbia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 13, 2024

Appropriately, it's pretty easy to see exactly where Madame Web, the origin story of a clairvoyant superhero, is heading. These kinds of movies are so similar in structure and aim that it's really the specific type of superpower that serves as the only major distinction.

The power discovered by Dakota Johnson's Cassandra (That's a little on the nose, even for a comic book hero) "Cassie" Webb (Now, this is just pushing it) is somewhat unique, at least. Cassie has no superhuman strength—just whatever one would expect of a New York City paramedic. She doesn't possess some physics-defying degree of agility or the ability to shoot some sort of projectile—like, say, webbing—from her wrists.

Those powers, presumably, will belong to the nephew of Cassie's best friend and co-worker Ben Parker (Adam Scott) some 16 or so years from the now of this story. Even when these movies try to tell a standalone story, it's as if the filmmakers or studio executives can't help but try to cram in some more recognizable idea or figure into the mix. Do they realize how much such moves undercut the character—or, in this case, characters—whose story they're trying to tell? Little is more deflating than to be constantly reminded that a background character—or, in this case, a character who hasn't even been born yet—is probably more interesting than one in the foreground.

Here, that very well might be the case, though. Cassie and her eventual team of not-yet-superpowered protégés are at the center of co-writer/director SJ Clarkson's movie, and even they seem to be waiting for something to happen to them and for some future in which they'll have something to do.

Cassie has a little advantage over us in this regard. She can see a future in which the trio of Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Mattie (Celeste O'Connor) will have spider-like superpowers, pull off all sorts of daring moves, and fight bad guys with an assortment of equipment and/or physical alterations, such as harnessing electric bolts or sticking to walls with an extra quartet of long legs. In the meantime, they're mostly running and hiding and stopping everything so that Cassie can get some more specific details about how and why she ended up with the power to see the future.

We learn why immediately, by the way, during a prologue set in the Peruvian Amazon in 1973. Cassie's pregnant mother (played by Kerry Bishé) is searching for a rare spider with venom that could have a multitude of revolutionary medical uses. Instead, she's betrayed by her guide Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim), shot, and seen through labor by a group of local spider-people, who have used the venom to gain powers. They try to save the mother with one of those spiders, but apparently, the venom only affects Cassie just before she's born.

Thirty years later, Cassie has a near-death experience and, after Ben revives her, finds herself regularly experiencing what she think is déjà vu. While trying to leave the city for some time alone to figure out things, she has a vision of Ezekial murdering Julia, Anya, and Mattie on the train. Cassie stops it from happening, and the four now must evade a man with superpowers who wants to murder three teenage girls before they can kill him at some point in the next ten years (How Ezekial and his tech whiz, played by Zosia Mamet, know even this broad range of a timeline from a recurring dream is one of a few details the filmmakers hope we'll ignore as a blatant contradiction of the story's own terms).

The screenplay (written or cobbled together by the Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker, and the director) does have an intriguing hook, then, as Cassie can foretell when and how Ezekial will attack next (There's also the amusing and completely ignored notion that the villain is fulfilling a prophecy by taking action, because acknowledging and reconciling a paradox like that takes a little effort). Without any other powers, she and the teens have to use their wits to outmaneuver this foe, but they mostly keep putting themselves needlessly in harm's way so there can be some action.

That action isn't convincing, either, in terms of the visual effects, the staging, or the editing of these sequences. The cuts between certain bits make it obvious Clarkson is editing around logistical and/or budgetary shortcomings, similar to the way a lot of expository dialogue is clearly the result of post-production recording sessions.

Madame Web may look cheap, then, but its messy plotting and half-considered characters are arguably cheaper. Ultimately, the movie is so interested in its potential franchise future that it doesn't bother to tell an engaging story in the here and now.

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