Madame Web Review: A Campy Good Time Tangled In A Tired Franchise Web

By now, you probably already know that the viral line of dialogue from the first "Madame Web" trailer — "he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died" — doesn't actually appear in the finished film. The robotic line reading became the easiest thing to mock about a film that arrived fully formed as a cultural punching bag, latched onto largely because it appeared to suggest that the actors in superhero films were as fatigued by the genre as audiences were. And yet, not only does it not appear in director S.J. Clarkson's film, but it retroactively sounds like it was awkwardly stitched together from several separate lines of dialogue, which when placed in tandem, makes it sound like star Dakota Johnson has no enthusiasm to offer. 

Now, I'm not going to suggest that "Madame Web" deserved much better than having its fate sealed by such a clumsy marketing campaign — hell, I'm not even going to argue that it's particularly good — but there are sparks of creativity and a sense of ambition in "Madame Web" that this genre has been lacking for a while, which at least makes for an intriguing curio in places. It stumbles far more than it takes off, but it doesn't deserve to be written off as a whole, despite the various embarrassing faults that, alongside those moments of genuine inspiration, frequently derail the movie.

After a prologue introducing villain Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim, having the time of his life hamming it up in an underwritten role), who was in the Amazon researching spiders with Cassandra Webb's mother right before she died, we flash forward to 2003, where we get to meet Dakota Johnson's anti-social paramedic. Following a near-death experience after she plunges into the Hudson River trying to save a man trapped in a car, her perception of time begins to shift. She frequently witnesses premonitions of pivotal moments before they take place. When on the subway, she has the most vivid one yet, as three teenage strangers (Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O'Connor, and Isabela Merced) are torn limb from limb by a man in a spider suit. This is Ezekiel, who has been experiencing his own premonitions every night, witnessing his death at the hands of these three girls who don't yet know each other, let alone know they're going to become a super-team — Cassandra steps in to save them, and suddenly, they're on the run.

In interviews promoting the film, S.J. Clarkson has tended to describe it as a "psychological thriller," more stripped-down than the typical comic book movie due to the relatively grounded nature of clairvoyance as a superpower. When "Madame Web" fully leans into this, it proves more arresting than anticipated, each subsequent set piece built around one of these premonitions more ambitious and hallucinatory than the last. The aforementioned subway sequence is best at placing us within a warped headspace, weaponizing the familiarity that comes with the incessant repetition of events to create a nightmare that only continues to fracture and fold back in on itself.

When utilized in a more conventional fight scene, such as a diner brawl scored to Britney's "Toxic" — some points deducted here for the fact that the song was released a year later than the film is set, in 2004 — there are earnest thrills built around the way Cassandra refines plans of action that didn't work out the first time, like a more grounded take on "Edge of Tomorrow" or "Source Code." Unfortunately, the film itself doesn't seem to acknowledge that these moments are the obvious highlights, and so we trudge into a third act that avoids utilizing this unique power in favor of a cliched, thrill-free showdown at an abandoned Pepsi factory, a hilarious climax considering the surely record-breaking amounts of Pepsi product placement in the two hours preceding it.

Before I pivot into outlining the film's numerous missteps, I do need to make one thing clear: "Madame Web" is significantly better than "Morbius" for the crucial reason that, while it is often as howlingly bad, it is at least entertaining to watch. "Morbius" had to be transformed into a meme to obtain a certain kitsch factor absent from the snooze of a movie itself, whereas "Madame Web" is endearingly stupid at face value, which may be why the critical knives feel sharper this time. I'm of the belief that a fun-bad movie is of higher artistic worth than a boring-bad movie, so despite everything I'm going to say about it now, do know that it is practically "Citizen Kane" when placed next to Jared Leto's anti-hero outing.

Within the first 10 minutes, via Ezekiel's nightmares, we see the three girls in their superhero costumes, appearing to set up their transformation by the film's end. It is less of a spoiler and more of a word of warning to say that this does not happen within "Madame Web," as this premonition instead appears to be pre-empting their eventual evolution in a later franchise entry, one it's safe to assume will not happen. Even within a superhero movie purposefully designed to be stripped-down from the bloat plaguing Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC efforts of late, it can't help but tease either the establishment of a wider universe or its fundamental place within a pre-existing one. That proves every bit as egregious in "Madame Web" as it was in the recent Marvel series "Echo," which was trumpeted as a standalone effort just to spend the first episode recapping "Hawkeye."

Take Cassie's co-worker, played by Adam Scott, whose name has been purposefully left out of the marketing even as it's revealed within the opening 10 minutes (other reviews have spoiled it, but I'll play fair and talk around it). He's a fundamental figure within the lore of another Marvel hero, but in attempting to minimize ties with that looming franchise, the film tries to have its cake and eat it, consciously alluding to recognizable names and iconography linked to Spider-Man without actually saying them outright. It's fan service straining not to be regarded as something so cheap despite its inherent laziness, which is why you don't get to hear, for example, the name of the woman Scott's character has started dating, or the name of the son his sister (Emma Roberts) is heavily pregnant with, even as one moment is built around a baby-shower name-guessing game designed to get audiences so frustrated they start screaming it at the screen. By the time Cassandra goes on a pilgrimage to the Amazon, where she meets a man who tells her, Yoda-style, "with great responsibility, great power comes," you can almost hear the final nail being placed in the coffin of superhero origin stories.

Every moment of campy enjoyment is punctured by the death rattle of the franchise machine it's been forcibly placed within, which only makes its graver narrative flaws harder to overlook. I want to be able to recommend "Madame Web" as a good time at the movies — which is, to be clear, different from being a "good movie" — but the mechanics of the wider cinematic universe undercut its inspired silliness at every turn. It's a frustrating case of a film neither living up to its potential as an uncomplicated so-bad-its-good romp nor capitalizing on its unique moments to become something that transcends the franchise it's encased in.

"Madame Web" swings into cinemas on February 14.