Madame Web is the latest attempt at Sony trying to expand on their Spider-Man property through its characters. The film follows Cassandra Web, played by Dakota Johnson, who must confront her past just as she is forced into helping three young girls who are being hunted down by an evil adversary with ties to Web’s past. I had not interest in seeing the film other than the cast and the universe it has ties to. I am fully aware that Sony continues to fail badly as they are trying to expand on their own universe. I need to stop putting so much faith in a film that is clearly marked as bad no matter how good I think the cast or concept really is.

I’ll get the tiny positives out of the way first by saying that the cast truly deceives you into believing this may be a good movie. Between Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabella, Merced, and Adam Scott, the film truly capitalizes on their star power to make up for how poor everything is. Compared to the previous Sony Spider-Man spinoff, Morbius, tries it best to fleshing out more of a story and manages to even add in interest concepts that start off strong in theory, but quickly gets worse than what you can imagine.

Five minutes into the film and the writing was all over the screen. The marketing already had the writing all over the screen of how bad it was going to be. At least in bad films, the beginning could always start off strong. Nope. Not here. What we get is a bit of prologue of how Cassandra Web came to be. Her pregnant mother is out searching for spiders in Peru with a group of others. Amongst this group is Ezekiel Sims, played by Tahar Rahim, who ends up killing the group, as well as Cassandra’s mother and ends up becoming the antagonist of the film. During this opening sequence, we get sloppy editing as it cuts from all variations of cinematography creating the most overstimulating experience that only prolongs throughout the rest of the film. The camera will suddenly zoom in on characters, flip upside down, and the editing mimics the early 2000’s chaotic feeling where the camera looks like its shaking. For a film that mostly takes place in the 2000’s, it serves as no coincidence that the film decided to be an exact replica of a bad superhero movie of its time. While it could have at least been charming or fun is void of that due to what feels like way too many cooks in the kitchen.

From there, we jump into 2003 where Cassandra is now an adult working as a paramedic. Her relationship with Ben Parker, played by Adam Scott is severely unrealistic based on the way they talk and act. Maybe this could have worked under the right direction and writing… maybe. When Cassandra has a near death experience, she now realizes that she has powers where she can look into the future featuring some of the worst CGI I have ever seen. She then goes on to have scene after scene after scene where she is continuously seeing into the future. We get it, she can see into the future. We just don’t ever get the explanation as to why she can.

The villain that kills Cassandra’s mother in the beginning is living during this time at the same age due to the assumption that he had a spider bite him that gave him these amazing powers. For some reason, he has this nightmare every night where three girls end up murdering him. When we are introduced to this revelation, this wakes up his one night stand. This leads to another revelation that this one night fling is an agent (or something. I don’t know.) The cinematography here is beyond sloppy. There are Dutch shots that have both characters in the same area of the screen in their own shot, resulting in the eye staying in one spot. He then decides to kill this person for what feels like little to no reason, but perhaps that’s the best way to explain this character. He kills for no reason, because there isn’t even a good reason for him to kill these girls that he has a dream about – mind you, a dream that actually never comes close to happening. He is also able to immediately convince this girl to search for these other girls. This girl he convinces has her convictions as first, but ends up helping him due to…. well, lazy writing. The bad guy here is clearly obsessed with power. Unfortunately, his character is underdeveloped to become obsolete.

When we are introduced to Cassandra, we also see the three girls that are in this villains’ dreams. The girls play an important part as Cassandra ends up saving them due to being able to see what happens in the future. What could have been a strong action sequence ends up becoming beyond messy. Cassandra decides to get on the subway just as the other three girls also happen to be there. While it is really just coincidence, it’s probably the best way to get these characters together due to how bad the writing is. The villain is able to magically get in this superhero suit. The girls are easily persuaded into following this stranger. The police are not only quickly jumping to conclusions, it seems like the entire force is at the subway station. Just as the girls are finally able to escape, the police that was taken down is somehow able to inform the news of this within seconds.

This results in Cassandra jumping these girls off in the middle of the woods. Remember how the police was able to immediately inform the news of what happens? What’s funny is that Cassandra not only throw these girls in the middle of the woods, she ends up driving around in the taxi she stole to get away from the villain. She is still able to drive in this taxi with no troubles and even manages to fly to Peru and back with no troubles. It’s laughably bad. I don’t even want to give much else away in the story; however, it feels necessary to explain my frustrations of the film. The girls go off to do stupid stuff in a diner resulting in Cassandra doing something that is actually very immature. She even drives to the diner that ends up taking longer to get there than it did when she walked there, because driving to Toxic by Britney Spears is cooler than authenticity. I hope this is more than enough to convince you how idiotic the writing is.

It takes a lot for a film to mess up sound. I never saw its importance, mostly because films tend to manage it well. For a big studio film such as this, messing up sound like the ADR should not be tolerated. For that component to even be screwed up can really make the audience distrust you. What should be a film that transports you into another world ends up looking and sounding like a fan film. The ADR consistently has the character’s mouth moving with the dialogue not lining up with the movement. It’s a complaint that I heard plenty of going into the film and it’s much worse than I could have ever expected.

Overall, Madame Web is a movie that should not exist. Whenever it seems like the film might turn around for the best, the film manages to make it far worse than what you could imagine. The film tries its best to create something organic, yet creates more confusion as much is not explained by the end. Sony has every opportunity to make something unique between its cast and story and continue to fail miserably. I have no faith in what they try to do next in this uninspired universe that cares more about dollars than quality.

VERDICT: Awful