Before I start with this review, I want to preface by saying that I knew nothing about this character before screening this movie. And this is coming from a comic book geek. Specifically, a Marvel fan. So my interest was piqued when I first heard about the Madame Web film, and I decided to go into this movie with a clean slate. I didn’t read any comics, didn’t peruse through any Wikipedia articles, nor did I scour down the rabbit hole of Reddit looking for information.
It was my intention to see this film with an empty canvas in mind. I say all of this because for many viewers unfamiliar with this universe, I can assure you, this film is set up in a way where you don’t have to be a hardcore Spider-Man nerd or even have any familiarity with the Spiderverse in order to understand the premise of this character or her narrative.
Sony Pictures’ Madame Web is an origin story. The audience is introduced to Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) as a paramedic who works in Manhattan. She lives alone with her cat and has a close friendship with her colleague Ben Parker (Adam Scott). One fateful day during a rescue attempt while trying to save a man from his vehicle hanging off a bridge, Cassandra is accidentally trapped in the car. As the vehicle tips over, it falls off the bridge and crashes into the water with Cassandra still inside.
It’s at this moment that her supernatural powers take over and we learn that Cassandra isn’t like everyone else. How she attains these powers is revealed later in the film, but for now, Ben manages to release her from the vehicle, get her to the surface and resuscitate her back to life. Shortly after, Cassandra begins to see visions of the future and becomes clairvoyant.
These morbid visions predict a dire future for the fate of both people she knows and complete strangers. Three of these strangers include Julia Carpenter (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabel Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor). Cassandra sees these three girls are under the threat of Ezekiel (Tahir Rahim), a man who is dead set on exterminating each of them. At the moment, Cassandra doesn’t know why, but we the audience do. It’s determined in an earlier scene that Ezekiel, too, is clairvoyant. The vision of the future he sees is that of his own demise. His death is caused by three women, and those women are Julia, Anya, and Mattie. So in Terminator-like fashion, he has to kill them as young girls before they become adults and wreak havoc on him.
Madame Web offers a substantive backstory as to how Cassandra obtained her supernatural abilities, and there is a beautiful thread that connects her relationship with her mother and how it shapes the woman she has become. There’s something always intriguing about how paternal relationships have such an impact on the trajectory of the lives and actions of superheroes. Director S.J. Clarkson, who also co-wrote the screenplay, did a great job of delivering some intense moments throughout the film as we see through Cassandra’s eyes these gruesome impending futures and rip back to the present to see how she’s going to intersect and change the inevitable.
It’s suspenseful and intense scene-by-scene. The use of musical cues to take us from present to future, while it’s been done before, was still a clever use of time-stamping. My only gripe with the film was at times the CGI looked really cheesy, which I still don’t understand with the budgets these studios produce today. The performances were pretty good. I enjoyed the girls and their banter back and forth as entitled teenagers trying to make sense of the situation they were in.
The teens were written with a three-dimensional quality and each had their own identity and personality. There wasn’t a whole lot to unpack between the three in the film’s one hour and 54 minute run time, but we did get a bit of backstory on all three to get a sense of who they are and where they came from.
And apparently they all have terrible parents.
Overall, Madame Web is suspenseful and action-packed with a substantive origin story that really helps set the stage for this franchise to build on future narratives. It’s truly a fun ride. And while there has been some unfortunate press around this film including low ticket sales or Johnson’s own sentiments around filming with a blue screen and how it could be a disaster, don’t let that taint your feelings about the movie.
While I do agree to some extent that the CGI looked cheesy, it doesn’t break the film. And the jury is still out about ticket sales, as pre-sales are not always a precursor to how well a film performs at the box office. I personally came in with super low expectations when I screened the film and I enjoyed it. Go in with an open mind and see for yourself how you feel about the film, just don’t let the negative press sway your opinion.
Madame Web opens in theaters everywhere February 14, 2024.
