Madame Web (Netflix) 2024

Up front I will say that Madam Web ain’t as bad as I was led to believe. Sure it is tame compared to epics like Zack Snyder’s Justice League or Avengers infinity War, and also lacks the established familiarity from sequels like Guardians of the Galaxy 3 or Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom, but compared alongside similar superhero origin movies of recent years such as Blue Beetle and Shang Chi, Madame Web really isn’t that bad. 

Madame Web re-envisions the mysterious marvel comics character into a more contemporary superhero while also serving as an origin story for her as well as three other characters who will eventually become Spiderwoman, 

another Spiderwoman 

and Arana from the comics. 

 It is 2003 and Cassandra Web is a paramedic who unlocks a special precognitive super power after a fatal accident. This power was seemingly granted through a mysterious ritual by an indigenous Peruvian tribe after her pregnant mother was shot by a man named Ezekiel Sims. The ritual involved getting bit by a special spider and while it failed to save her mother it did save Cassandra. With her powers, Cassandra experiences haunting visions of Ezekiel donning a black spiderman styled costume and killing 3 teenage girls. Cassandra takes it upon herself to track down and protect teenagers Julia Cornwall, Mattie Franklin and Anya Corazon before they are murdered.

 I found a lot of the movie to be just a tad shoddy in aspects of execution. Many of Ezekiel’s scenes were obviously dubbed over in ADR with dialogue not matching his actual talking footage (though kudos to the editor for doing their best to edit around footage where actor Tahar Rahim’s mouth is obscured). 

The whole “look” feels like a tv show rather than a 80 million dollar budget movie and the camerawork tends to zoom in and out at weird times almost like they couldn’t decide how to frame the scene. 

The movie is a tightly paced chase right up to this weird segment where Cassandra just leaves the teens at her friend’s house and goes to Peru to discover the origin of her powers. This is despite making a big plot point of the fact that Ezekiel has technology that allows him to track people anywhere he wants and is still an active threat. The action is also nothing impressive and Dakota Johnson sounds like she’s sleepy half the time.

 That being said, I love the idea of a connected origin for the various spider powered heroes. When in his dark spiderman costume, Ezekiel is a frightening terminator type killer with enhanced strength and reflexes thanks to experimenting on himself using the same special spider that granted Cassandra her abilities. 

Each of the 3 girls are unique in their own way and quite memorable though only Sidney Sweeny’s Julia having any sort of character arc.

 I was also impressed by the visualisation of Cassandra’s powers and the use of a web motif throughout the movie whether it be in cracked glass or streams of bubbles in water, or an explosion. 

 Overall I put Madame Web as “unremarkable”. Its positives do balance out the negatives but it is such an even balance that it brings everything right back to “mid”. It is not horrible; I did enjoy it more than The Flash but it definitely could have been better. I watched it on Netflix in June 2024 and was satisfied with experiencing it on streaming since it does like streaming is where it belongs, rather than in a cinema.