I can confidently say that out of all the movies that exist, Kraven the Hunter is undoubtedly one of them. It’s a shame that it is such a bore to sit through because Sony had the potential to make a great (non-Venom) Marvel movie. Not only did they allow director J.C. Chandor (an inspired pick) to make an R-rated film, but it also contained the most star-studded distribution of any Sony Marvel picture to date. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is undoubtedly a great pick to bring Sergei Kravinoff/Kraven the Hunter to life, and the additions of Russell Crowe, Fred Hechinger, Christopher Abbott, Ariana DeBose, and Alessandro Nivola are all excellent, each bringing a distinct, singular talent to the roles they are tasked to play.

And yet, with all of this incredible talent in front of and behind the camera, you can count on Sony’s (specifically, Avi Arad’s) micromanagement to remove Chandor’s initial vision and turn it into a pure, torturous nightmare to sit through. Sure, a Spider-Man-less origin story on Kraven may not be the best movie idea in the world, but there’s enough material to make this film semi-interesting. And it doesn’t start half-bad, either. We meet Kraven, already superpowered, exacting one hell of a killing spree inside a Russian prison (this eight-minute opening scene was dropped online last week to muster up excitement on the movie. Sony’s gonna Sony).

The violence is tactile and effective, plus Taylor-Johnson’s imposing physique makes him a rather formidable person to watch, beating all of these people up and killing them with one improvised weapon after the next (it’s decidedly R-rated, which is a good thing!). But we slowly start to see the cracks in its structure, from inexplicably baffling cuts to a (poorly-rendered) CGI wolf attacking Kraven during a total whiteout; things aren’t starting to look very good.

However, Taylor-Johnson always captivates in the film’s opening section, leading us to believe that this (potentially) final entry in the Sony Spider-Man Universe could be salvageable.

Spoiler alert: it isn’t.

After this cold open, Chandor and screenwriters Richard Wenk, Art Marcum & Matt Holloway pull back the curtain and reveal how Sergei became who he is now, with a flashback set 16 years earlier. In the wake of her mother’s suicide, Sergei’s father, Nikolai (played by Russell Crowe in his terrible accent era), takes him and his brother, Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), big-game hunting. This is fine and all until Chandor and editors Chris Lebenzon and Craig Wood cut to a scene featuring a young Calypso (Ariana DeBose) being explained the power of the tarot cards she holds in her hands. 

We quickly begin to notice glaring ADR overdubbing, overstuffed exposition and unnaturally stilted dialogues coming to light, illustrating how a Sony Marvel movie changes at almost every turn and may not be what Chandor initially filmed. Bad ADR occurs in this two-hour-long film several times, with DeBose’s Calypso being its biggest culprit. 

Her lips don’t move, yet we hear her character spew the biggest nonsense of the entire movie, nonchalantly delivered à la Tahar Rahim in Madame Web (thank God he had a César-worthy, career-best performance in Grand Corps Malade and Mehdi Idir’s Monsieur Aznavour to salvage this embarrassing moment in his Hollywood stint). And it’s a shame that DeBose’s post-Oscar career has been marred by a series of terrible movies, with Wish, Argylle, and now Kraven added to a once-promising resumé that has unfortunately wasted her talents.

It’s even worse when the actor seems to belong in a completely different movie. Taylor-Johnson seems more attuned to what Chandor wants to depict on-screen, especially when he attempts to explore Sergei’s animalistic side through spiritually-charged images shot with surprising panache by cinematographer Ben Davis, who has worked on several Marvel pictures, including Chloé Zhao’s Eternals. 

This makes it unsurprising when Sergei’s first human kill is poetically captured, with the camera observing him behind large grass as if an animal stalking its prey before making a move. And several well-shot and composed action sequences could make this offering potentially tantalizing with a better, less meandering screenplay than the one we have. The crux of Kraven the Hunter’s central conflict is about the titular character’s rivalry with his father, who has pissed off mercenary Aleksei Sytsevitch (played by Alessandro Nivola, who, as silly as he can get, is no Paul Giamatti in The Amazing Spider-Man 2), and looks to bring his criminal empire down. 

He does so by kidnapping Dmitri and hiring an assassin simply known as “The Foreigner” (Christopher Abbott) to track Sergei down. Abbott’s Foreigner is the most interesting antagonist, with Chandor clearly having fun capturing a more noir-inspired aesthetic whenever he’s on screen. His powers are slightly silly but are terrifically visualized. It’s a shame that his narrative arc goes nowhere, and the same can be said for Dmitri, whose Chameleon acts as a ‘tease’ for future installments that will never materialize beyond what we have seen (including the garish, Reed Richards modifying his face in Fant4stic-esque visual effects on display). 

As long as the movie is (127 minutes, the longest of any SSU picture!), none of the characters are adequately developed or explored. Calypso is the worst possible offender. DeBose’s ADR doesn’t help, but the character does nothing but stand in the middle of an action scene and yet off the screen as soon as it’s over, never to be seen again. The father/son relationship should theoretically be what Kraven the Hunter devotes most of its attention to. However, the film is far too busy attempting to coalesce one parallel storyline after the next without caring much about its central character in the first place. 

Taylor-Johnson is decent, and so are most of the actors who are forced to tiptoe around shoddy material, and, to its credit, the R-rated action is quite effective. A Rambo-lite setpiece set in the woods offers some much-needed catharsis to an otherwise lethargically paced superhero actioner, and any bout of hyperviolence given by Kraven’s “code” feels like a breath of fresh air in an era of stale blockbuster entertainment. For once, we can actually see the blood and guts being ripped out of the characters (compared to the murky gray sludge of Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine), and there seems to be thought when it comes to putting Kraven head-to-head with the Rhino, as shoddy as it may feel. 

The cinematography does at least try to be semi-interesting, especially when Kraven begins to experience a form of epiphany within his transformation. Unfortunately, these moments feel sparse and never fully commit to one idea, or, in this case, visual flourish. I will say that, as far as Sony’s films are concerned, Kraven contains the clearest and most riveting action sequences this franchise has ever seen, which is a good thing after watching so many CGI blobs fighting at the same time with no discernable differences (Venom: The Last Dance innocent). 

Still, there isn’t enough hard-R action to save a thunderously boring superhero (or antihero) film that’s only made for Sony to retain the rights to one of Spider-Man’s most famous antagonists before they inevitably go back to Marvel. That’s also why Kraven only wears his iconic suit for 30 seconds during its final scene, as expected, in pure Sony fashion.

This part shows massive contempt for the audience who has once again bought a ticket to a film made by a studio who has never cared about making a good superhero (or supervillain origin story) movie in the first place. All they want is to desperately hold on to these characters, hoping that audiences are gullible enough to buy into their shared universe. The Venom movies were successful because of Tom Hardy’s ineffable chemistry with his symbiotic buddy. 

None of the other Sony movies achieved success because they attempted to take themselves far too seriously without ever caring about the characters they depicted on screen. That’s why Morbius failed. That’s why Madame Web failed. That is also why Kraven the Hunter will fail, and deservedly so.

Kraven the Hunter is now playing in theatres.