by James Coulter
Let’s be honest: was anyone expecting this movie to be good?
Kraven the Hunter is the last in the line of films attempting to create a cinematic universe of Spider-Man characters sans Spider-Man: Venom, Morbius, and Madame Web. And to no one’s surprise, nobody wanted to watch Spider-Man movies without Spider-Man.
Every single one of these movies has been terrible. The only exception is Venom, but only because those movies proved to be so bad they’re hilarious. So, was it any surprise Kraven the Hunter turned out to be a massive flop?
Honestly, the only reason I even watched this stinker was because I had to watch two movies, one of which was Nosferatu. The only other movies playing at the theater were Sonic 3 (which I already reviewed), Gladiator II (which I never saw the first movie), and Mufasa (which I refuse to watch on principle).
So, I knew I was watching this movie under protest. And I knew it was going to be bad. The only question was, “How bad?” Bad enough to make you visit the DVD aisle of a store just so you can find a copy of Madame Web and apologize for being too harsh on it.
Yes, that bad!
Let’s skip pretenses. We know this movie was awful. Let’s just explain why.
Kraven the Hunter follows the story of Sergei, one of two sons of a criminal overlord. During a hunting trip, he is mauled by a lion. His life is saved through a potion given to him by a voodoo priestess. That potion also gives him the strength and agility of a lion. Sergi eventually escapes the clutches of his abusive father and uses his new powers to hunt down poachers. And so he becomes Kraven the Hunter, a hunter who hunts the hunters.
Years later, his brother, Dimitri, is kidnapped, and now Kraven needs to hunt down his captors. However, he will need to evade a super-powered assassin and one of his father’s former colleagues to do so. Will Kraven take down the hunters along with his father and his criminal empire?
Kraven the Hunter does the impossible. It makes Madame Web look good in comparison. Yes, it’s really that bad!
Madame Web was undoubtedly bad, but at least it was bad in interesting ways. At least it had interesting ideas and concepts, even if it failed spectacularly in implementing them.
Madame Web had an interesting concept concerning time travel and manipulation. It didn’t implement that concept very well, but it was interesting nonetheless and could have made for a good movie if done properly.
Sure, Madame Web had bad dialogue, line deliveries, flat characters, and incessant Spider-Man Easter eggs up the wazoo, but at least all of those flaws made the film so bad it’s good. At least Madame Web was bad enough to be unintentionally hilarious. At least it had notable flaws to talk about.
But, folks, what am I supposed to talk about with Kraven the Hunter? This isn’t even a movie that’s so bad it’s good. It’s just so bad it’s boring. There is nothing interesting to talk about, either good or bad.
Stop me if you heard this one before: a person is on the near brink of death until he is saved by magic that gives them superpowers. If that sounds like something that’s been done before, that’s because it is, and Kraven the Hunter does absolutely nothing new or original with it. Kraven is just some guy who’s super strong and agile and who uses his powers to fight criminals…you know, like most other superhero movies!
The only interesting note is with the villains. One is an assassin who can freeze time, which sounds cool, but, like everything else in the movie, this character’s not put to good use. And his defeat in the end feels extremely anti-climatic.
And then there’s the Rhino. No spoilers, but let’s just say that anyone who ever made fun of the Rhino mech suit in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 owes it an apology. Because…my goodness, is this version of the Rhino bad!
The only good part of the movie is the opening act, which is an excellent prison breakout scene. In fact, if you do watch this movie, only watch that part and stop the movie after it’s done. Because the movie won’t get any better after that.
To quote another movie critic, Kraven the Hunter is “less of a structured narrative with a beginning, middle, and end and more like disjointed scenes and action sequences thrown into a blender and spat out the other side. Actions and events have almost nothing in common with their consequences, characters talk at each other like they’re having completely different conversations, the antagonist is one of the weakest and most ludicrous villains I have seen in any movie ever, the acting is atrocious, the effects are laughable, and there’s an almost palatable air of indifference to the entire movie.”
Thus Kraven the Hunter ends the Spider-Man-less Spiderverse, not with a bang, but a whimper.
