Kraven: The Hunter (2024) is directed by J.C. Chandor and stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Russell Crowe, Christopher Abbott, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Tom Reed, Levi Miller, Tom Reed, Billy Barratt, and Murat Seven. This is the final film in Sony’s Spiderman villain universe and tells the origins of the titular Kraven the Hunter (Taylor-Johnson). After being brutally attacked while hunting a lion, a teenage Sergei Kravinoff is nursed back to health by Calypso (DeBose), a mysterious medicine woman who gives him a potion that unlocks his supernatural abilities as “The Hunter” – a mythical force who brings justice to those who deserve it. Years later, an adult Kraven discovers that Dmitri (Hechinger), his beloved younger brother, has been kidnapped by one of their father’s former associates, Aleksei Sytsevich. In order to save his brother, Kraven is forced to face off against not only Aleksei and his henchmen but also a mysterious mercenary with mystical powers who only refers to himself as The Foreigner (Abbott). Along the way, family ties are put to the test when Kraven learns that his estranged father, Nikolai (Crowe), may be complicent in his brother’s kidnapping.

From front to back, Kraven the Hunter undeniably features some of the year’s worst performances. It doesn’t help that the characters are written as poorly as possible, but the cast does nothing to elevate them. The dialogue is often laughable and delivered with inconsistent and silly Russian accents. The number of times I heard hints of Johnson’s British accent even though he’s supposed to be Russian was honestly concerning. Sony’s paying someone of his talent for this? They should be furious. He’s so bad, in fact, that he completely distracts from how wooden everyone else is. First and foremost, the writers seem far too desperate to make this character cool, but all of the attempts to do so just result in the opposite. The writers for some reason thought it would be a smart idea to strip away almost every aspect of the character that makes him a recognizable villain. They essentially shift the character to be the opposite of what he’s known and loved for. My God, they don’t even have the balls to put the character in his iconic costume. At best, the character comes across as a slightly more violent version of Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura. If the audience wants to better understand the extent of how poorly this character is written, they need only reference one line of dialogue, “The name’s Craven, but with a K.” 

The editing is comically jarring, not a single joke made me laugh, and something that makes zero logical sense happens about every five minutes. It’s also just a tonal mess that seems to have no desire to take itself seriously. The thing is, unlike the Venom films that often felt intentionally bad, this just feels lazy and out-of-touch. I will say that the film’s Hard-R violence adds tension which elevates the experience slightly above watching its predecessor, Madame Web (2024). 

Overall, this is easily one of the worst films of the year and stands toe to toe with Madame Web as one of the most insulting examples of comic book filmmaking. The action is nothing new, the visuals are dull, the acting sucks, and the script is frustratingly stupid. There’s almost nothing I can recommend about this movie and I hope no one watches it, but at least it’s not as bad as Madame Web. D