Madame Web Review: A 4/10 Spider-Verse Misfire
Madame Web had the bones of a fascinating premise — clairvoyance, fate, the spider-web of destiny. The execution is a 4/10 stumble.
This post contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.
🕷️ Introduction
🕸️ This review is part of our Sony Marvel Universe Hub – every Sony Spider-Man, Venom and Marvel film ranked and explained.
There is a version of Madame Web that works. A psychic origin story set in 2003, built around clairvoyance and the spider-web of fate rather than the usual punching-and-quipping formula — that is actually a compelling angle. The problem is that this version never made it to the screen. What arrived in February 2024 is a film so tonally uncertain, so badly assembled, and so narratively isolated that it makes Morbius look like a tight narrative exercise. That is not a compliment to either film.
Dakota Johnson plays Cassandra Webb, a New York paramedic who develops the ability to see flashes of the future after a near-death experience deep in the Amazon. She quickly becomes entangled with three young women being hunted by Ezekiel Sims, a man who has seen a vision of his own death at the hands of spider-powered women and has decided to kill them first. The setup is not without potential. The execution is, to put it charitably, a creative disaster.
AdMadame Web (Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)
The Blu-ray edition — rent before you buy, honestly.
Before diving into the wreckage, some essential context on the Sony Spider-Man Universe: the SSU is a fascinating accident of corporate rights management. Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery and a wide cast of supporting characters, and when Marvel reclaimed Peter Parker for the MCU via a licensing deal with Disney, Sony found themselves holding a vault of characters with no Spider-Man to anchor them. Critically, this was not the original plan — Sony only became “Spidey-less” after Marvel started using Spider-Man in the MCU. Before that deal, Spider-Man was always meant to be the gravitational centre of Sony’s own universe. Once he moved next door, Sony had to improvise with what remained. The result was always going to be structurally awkward. The Venom films leaned into that awkwardness and found a tone that worked. Madame Web doesn’t lean into anything. It simply falls.
The numbers tell a story. An 11% critical score is not a case of critics being out of touch with a crowd-pleaser — the audience score is barely warmer. This is a film that genuinely did not work for most people who saw it, and the reasons are not mysterious once you spend 116 minutes with it.
🕸️ Narrative Architecture: The Spider-Web That Connects to Nothing
The central conceit — clairvoyance as a superpower — is one of the more unusual choices in the superhero genre, and for about fifteen minutes Madame Web seems to understand why that is interesting. Cassandra’s initial visions arrive as fractured, overlapping glimpses of possible futures, edited with a nervous energy that suggests the film might do something genuinely strange with its premise.
It doesn’t. The clairvoyance quickly settles into a simple plot mechanic: Cassie sees bad thing, Cassie averts bad thing, villain tries again. The narrative engine is a foot race dressed up as cosmic destiny. The twist — that by hunting the young women, Ezekiel is creating the very spider-warriors who will eventually defeat him — is the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that philosophy undergrads debate at 2am. The film has no interest in engaging with that irony. Ezekiel just chases people.
Tahar Rahim plays Ezekiel, and he is the film’s most fundamental problem. Rahim is an excellent actor — his work in A Prophet and The Mauritanian demonstrates real range. Here he is given nothing to work with beyond a dark wardrobe and an expression of sustained menace. His motivation is barely sketched. His backstory, connected to Cassie’s mother and an Amazon research expedition involving actual spider-people, is gestured at rather than developed. The Amazon prologue — a visually interesting sequence involving a tribe with spider-based abilities — suggests a far richer film that somebody decided not to make.
The three young women Cassie is protecting — future Spider-Women in the loosest comic-book sense — are played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor. All three are individually capable. All three are collectively underwritten to the point of interchangeability. They bicker, they bond, they run. One of them likes photography. You will not care about any of them as distinct characters, which is a serious problem in a film that exists, ostensibly, to establish them as the next generation of spider-heroes.
The script also carries a strange relationship with its own period setting. The film is set in 2003, but the detail never becomes meaningful. It is not an origin story that needs the pre-smartphone era to make narrative sense — removing the period setting would change almost nothing. It feels like a boardroom decision made to sidestep continuity questions with the MCU, dressed up as creative choice. Nobody then bothered to build an actual reason for it.
✂️ Production and Craft: Where the Film Actively Unravels
If the script is the structural failure, the editing is where Madame Web becomes genuinely difficult to watch. The film has a choppy, disconnected rhythm that suggests substantial material was cut in post-production — not trimmed for pace, but excised in chunks that leave visible wounds. Scenes abut one another without transition. Character motivations shift without the connective tissue that would make them legible. An entire subplot involving Cassie’s mother and the Peruvian spider-people feels as though it lost forty minutes somewhere between the shooting script and the final cut.
AdSony Spider-Man Universe 4-Film Collection (opens in a new tab)
The full SSU bundle — Venom, Morbius, Madame Web and more in one box.
This is not entirely unfamiliar territory for SSU productions. Morbius went through multiple reshoots and release delays before arriving as a similarly disjointed experience. There is a pattern here that suggests these films are being assembled under pressure and editorial interference that their directors cannot fully absorb. S.J. Clarkson is an accomplished filmmaker — her work on the first season of Jessica Jones is precisely the kind of dark, grounded, character-driven superhero storytelling that Madame Web might have aimed for. Whether the film on screen reflects her vision is genuinely unclear.
What is certain is that the dialogue is a separate problem — not a post-production artifact but a script-level failure. Lines that are meant to carry emotional weight land like furniture being dragged across concrete. Dakota Johnson, whose deadpan timing works brilliantly in the right context, cannot make a single piece of expository dialogue feel natural. A line where her character explains her backstory connection to Ezekiel — delivered in a single flat sentence that crams a decade of family history into under fifteen words — has already become shorthand online for how not to write clunky exposition. That line is real. It was in the final cut. It was released in cinemas worldwide.
The action sequences are competent at a technical level. Cars crash, buildings shake, the villain leaps across rooftops. None of it carries consequence because we do not particularly care about who wins or loses. The climactic confrontation, set in a power plant, should feel like a payoff. It feels like a parking lot argument that happened to have explosions nearby.
📺 The Viewing Experience: Home Cinema Honesty
Madame Web works marginally better at home than it did in cinemas, but that is damning with faint praise. The clairvoyant flash sequences have a stylistic flicker that reads more forgivingly on a single screen without the weight of a cinema ticket making you inventorise every disappointment in real time. The PG-13 rating means there is nothing here that requires theatrical scale — no set-piece ambitious enough to demand a big screen, no visual ambition that would suffer on a television.
If you are a completionist working through the SSU — and there are worse rabbit holes — home streaming is the right call. Watch it once, take note of the moments that almost work (the opening Amazon sequence, the visual palette of the early vision flashes), and move on. The film runs 116 minutes. It respects your time in at least that narrow sense.
AdMadame Web (4K Ultra HD) (opens in a new tab)
4K for the completionists who need every SSU film on the shelf.
Pros
- The clairvoyance premise is genuinely distinctive in a crowded superhero genre
- S.J. Clarkson's visual instincts flash through occasionally in the early vision sequences
- Dakota Johnson brings a low-key watchability even when the script consistently defeats her
- A merciful 116-minute runtime — it does not overstay its welcome
Cons
- Choppy, disjointed editing that suggests a more coherent film was cut apart in post-production
- Dialogue that is frequently and memorably stilted — the expository lines will be remembered for years
- A villain with a self-defeating motivation that the film refuses to engage with or examine
- Complete narrative isolation — connects to nothing in the SSU, builds toward nothing
- Three capable actresses given collectively nothing to do except be endangered
Conclusion: The SSU’s Clearest Low Point
Madame Web is not a disaster in the spectacular, entertainingly-bad sense. It is a disappointment in the quieter, more deflating sense — a film with a workable premise, a capable cast, and a director who has demonstrated better elsewhere, assembled into something that doesn’t hold together and doesn’t connect to anything. The 2003 period setting serves no narrative purpose. The villain’s motivation collapses under the lightest scrutiny. The three future spider-heroes are given nothing to do. The dialogue will be remembered.
The SSU exists because Sony holds valuable Spider-Man-adjacent rights and needs to exercise them. That corporate logic has occasionally produced something worthwhile — the Venom films have a weird, greasy chemistry that transcends their structural messiness. Madame Web never finds an equivalent energy. It is technically part of a universe but emotionally and narratively of no universe at all. The clairvoyance angle — which should have been the film’s entire identity — is used as a plot device and then quietly forgotten.
The Final Word: Skip it unless you are filling in the SSU map. There is genuinely better superhero content in every direction, including elsewhere in Sony’s own catalogue. A 4/10 is fair. It might even be generous.
Is Madame Web worth watching?
Is Madame Web connected to Spider-Man or the MCU?
Who directed Madame Web?
Is Madame Web suitable for kids?
How does Madame Web connect to the other Sony Spider-Man Universe films?
Disclaimer: This review and its visuals were created with the help of AI. Some links may be affiliate links – we may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.
You might also like
Kraven the Hunter Review: A Raw 6/10 SSU Action Film
Kraven the Hunter is tonally braver than anything else in the SSU — darker, bloodier, more willing to sit in its own brutality. Aaron Taylor-Johnson commits fully. The script doesn't match his commitment. Real action highlights, weak connective tissue. A fair 6/10.
Venom: The Last Dance Review – A 7/10 Symbiote Farewell
The Last Dance is the messiest and most cosmic entry in the Venom trilogy, but Tom Hardy's double act carries it home with warmth and weird energy. Knull is a genuinely imposing threat. The plot meanders. The farewell lands. A fun 7/10 send-off.
Venom (2018) Review: Gloriously Unhinged Buddy-Comedy
Venom is a mess and it knows it. Tom Hardy chews through every scene, his symbiote chews through everything else, and somehow the result is one of the most entertaining superhero films of its era. Not good cinema. Excellent cinema.