MADAME WEB (2023) (Sony Pictures Blu-ray Review)

MADAME WEB (2023) 

Blu-ray + Digital 

Label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: PG-13

Duration: 116 Minutes 12 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.391) 

Director: SJ Clarkson

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, Adam Scott

Sony spins another misguided expanded Spider-Verse web with the clunky Madame Web, a standalone origin story of the enigmatic Madame Web, a character who, as someone who read a lot of SPider-Man comics from the early 80's on through to the early 90's I am only vaguely familiar with. I actually do not recall her from the comics at all to be honest, most of what I do remember about the character comes from her popping-up in the 90's Spider-Man animated series, which I thought would work in this flicks favor, meaning I had no expectations, good or bad.

The film opens in 1973 with scientist Constance (Kerry Bishe, Scrubs) fully nine-month pregnant trekking through the Amazon jungles in Peru with her scout Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim, The Prophet), despite the fact that she's about to burst with child she is out and about in the wilds to locate a mythical spider said to have tremendous healing capabilities. The reason she is so dead-set on finding it is revealed much later in the film. She ends up finding the awesome-arachnid but when she does Ezekiel starts shooting members of the expedition, including Constance, and then making off with the coveted spider. As she lays bleeding to death a mythical tribe of indigenous people known as Las Arañas, who are imbued with spidey-powers, emerge from the jungle and whisk her away to a cave where they submerge her in a pool of water and let a spider with healing venom bite her. It turns out it's too late for her and she dies, but the Las Arañas birth the baby and her daughter survives. 

Thirty years later it's 2003 and her orphaned daughter Cassie (Dakota Johnson, Suspiria) is now a paramedic in NYC, doing her rounds with her medic partner Ben Parker (Adam Scott, Krampus), whose sister, Mary (Emma Roberts, Scream Queens) is pregnant... hmmm, Uncle Ben? Cassie is a pretty unlikable and seemingly unknowable young woman, and she becomes even more so when a near-death experience seemingly unlocks some latent clairvoyant powers, deluging her with disorienting waves of déjà vu, which she mistakes for some sort mental break from reality. That is until she has a vision of her co-worker O'Neil (Mike Epps, Next Friday) dying in an accident, and when she fails to act on it he actually dies exactly as she had envisioned. 

Meanwhile, her mother's killer Ezekiel is alive and well, also living in NYC, and not only has he prospered after the theft of the Amazonian arachnid but he has gained some spidey  powers, including not only strength, agility and the ability to cling to walls, but precognition like Cassie. He is haunted by a future vision of his own death at the hands of three Spider-Women, so he has set out to find and kill Julia (Sydney Sweeney, Under the Silver Lake), Mattie (Celeste O’Connor, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), and Anya (Isabela Merced, Father of the Bride), before they can become the envisioned Spider-Women. 

Eventually Cassie encounters the three women who have somehow fatefully converged onto the same train just as Ezekiel in a very Spider-Man esque spidey suit arrives to kill them, but they manage to escape thanks to Cassie's clairvoyant spider-senses. The four women reluctantly teaming-up to stay alive and defeat Ezekiel. 

Oof, that was my initial impression of Madame Web just a few minutes in, a clunky superhero flick that calls back to the bad ol' days of the early 2000's superhero flicks, more akin to Fantastic Four or Elektra than X-Men, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man or Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. Largely lacking style and cool special FX we instead get what feels like a made-for-TV pilot with a weak script, disinterested acting, and cringe-dialogue exchanges from start to finish, real humans do not speak or react like this, a lot of which sound like it was ADR'd after production wrapped, for whatever reason. 

From the start Dakota Johnson looks like she is being held hostage and forced to participate, I don't know if she realized early on how bad it was, or had a bad experience set, but she obviously does not want to be here, and you FEEL it, which is terrible since she is the protaganist. Also, big bad Ezekiel likewise shows no charisma whatsoever, his obviously ADR'd lines are absolutely lifeless, there's no spark or menace, it's like hearing Harrison Ford read the narration from the theatrical cut of Blade Runner, bad. Also, something that irked me is that we have Ben Parker, you know, uncle Ben, and a baby Peter Parker eventually arrives, but somehow Ezekiel is wearing a spider-suit that looks like an early misguided incarnation of the future Spidey suit, what the heck is that about? The film wants to have it's cake and eat it, too, but it's bad terrible cake, don't eat it my friends. 

There are just so many weird things here that simply do not work, like the trio of future spider-women going against Cassie's advice of staying hidden in the woods to avoid Ezekiel's camera scanning technology, only to emerge a few hours later when they get bored and hungry to get a bite to eat at a nearby diner, then all three jump up on a table to dance to Britney Spear's "Toxic" to the delight of annoying teen boys. Cassie also makes an impromptu and quite unnecessary trip to the Peruvian Rainforest to the exact spot where her mom dies and encountering one of the indigenous spider-tribe, which the films timelines doesn't seem to allow for, and then we get a finale that is obviously co-sponsored by Pepsi-Cola, it's an anti-climactic flurry of a finish that crams in how Cassie/Madame Web became blind and paralyzed from the waist down like she is in the comics and animated series, which just feels tacked-on and perfunctory. 

Perhaps the most egregious issue for me are the trailers that clearly advertise that this will be a film about Madame Web overseeing a trio of Spider-Women who battle big bad Ezekiel - that's just not true folks. There are visions of the Spider-Women experienced by both Ezekiel and Cassie, and they do look like cool sort of comic-accurate representations of their comic counterparts, but they are only visions glimpsed for mere seconds in the actual film, only Ezekiel ever gets anything resembling a traditional spidey costume, the trio of could-be spidey gals only get to run around trying not to die while being yelled at by the totally unlikable Cassie, and of course inexplicably dancing on the table at the diner to Britney's "Toxic". 

I rarely pooh-pooh on films, even ones I don;t like, I would prefer to build-up rather than tear-down, but c'mon, Sony needs to either do better than Morbius and Madame Web or just relinquish the SPidey rights back to Marvel Studios proper who I know would kill it, this is just embarrassing.  

Audio/Video: Madame Web (2024) arrives on Blu-ray from SPHE in 1080p HD widescreen (2.39:1) looking quite excellent with crisp detail and vibrant colors, black levels are idyllic and depth and clarity are excellent. Likewise the DTS-HD MA 5.1 with optional English subtitles is razor-sharp with plenty of low-end bombast and more atmospheric touches.

Special Features: 

- Gag Reel (4:31)
- Easter Eggs (3:55) 
- Oracle Of The Page (4:54)
- Fight Like A Spider (5:31) 
- Future Vision (6:51)
- Casting The Web (9:09)
- Deleted Scene (0:41)

- Previews (7:46)

- Digital Copy 

Screenshots from the SPHE Blu-ray: 

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