‘Kraven the Hunter’ is a Pitiful Mess of a Movie
Aaron Taylor-Johnson struts and scowls through Sony’s haphazardly-assembled franchise nonstarter "Kraven the Hunter."
Not as bad as studio cousin Morbius, yet, somehow, not better, Kraven the Hunter brings to an ignominious close the Sony Spider-Man Spinoff Universe. The series of films featuring legacy villains and side characters from Marvel’s Spider-Man comics, but never Spider-Man himself, the so-called SSU went out swinging with three releases in 2024 — the laughably clunky Madame Web, lackadaisical Venom: The Last Dance, and, finally, Kraven — all aligned in their astounding sense of how completely over this cinematic universe its creators appear to be.
In fact, it was reported on the eve of Kraven’s release that it would be the last spinoff in the SSU. Although, the film, directed by J.C Chandor (A Most Violent Year), still could have been a contender in its own right.
The savage hunter Kraven, in his acrobat’s tights and pecs-baring vests, might not have the name and face recognition of a Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus, but he’s ideally suited for action-movie adventures. Endowed with superhuman strength, speed, agility, and ego, and prone to operating in exotic, picturesque locales where he communicates with wild animals, he’s a Spidey foe who could thrive solo in the proper setting.
To their credit, the filmmakers seem to have a handle on what that setting could be, and what kind of action movie they wanted to make, planting Kraven (real name: Sergei Kravinoff) in a violent gangster tale within the international criminal underworld. It’s potentially fertile ground for this take-no-prisoners anti-hero, played by a guns-baring Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
The former Kickass star wears this brash comics character well, although his performance generally just amounts to posing, snarling, and stalking towards or away from the camera like a model on a catwalk. Taylor-Johnson conveys Kraven’s outsized self-regard, but no real depth comes across, just line readings.
There’s also brutal punching, knifing, and shooting. The actor does meet the physical demands of the part, as Kraven spills blood flagrantly in his skirmishes with poachers and gangsters. It’s the action scenes themselves that don’t hold up, often lacking set-up or suspense, and just ending with a random cut to a different location.
One booby-trap sequence, dropped in the movie like a Home Alone supercut, comes and goes without a hint of how or when Kraven devised these nifty traps. It’s a lost opportunity. The ostensible villain, The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott), wanders into the movie, making showy displays of his incredible ability to shift time or space, or something. What exactly his powers are is never explained, and he presents no plan nor purpose for stepping into this fray.
He makes a dramatic, super-powered entrance in one scene, blipping his way past a roomful of henchmen just so he can sit down triumphantly without saying anything. Then the movie cuts to something else, a real momentum killer.
Chandor and company might have had a handle on their concept, but the plotting, pacing, characterization, and dialogue slipped from their grasp, resulting in a shapeless origin voyage to nowhere. Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose also gets sucked into the vortex, playing another Spider-Man-associated villain, Calypso, who’s not a villain here.
She’s a plucky lawyer with a penchant for herbs and potions, a talent passed down by her grandmother, who was a mystic. In the comics, Kraven and Calypso are lovers, but no such chemistry sparks between Taylor-Johnson and DeBose, who is beset here by a Cher-in-Moonstruck wig, and at least one badly dubbed scene where her dialogue doesn’t match the action.
Calypso gets an origin story, too, briefly mashed-up with Kraven’s superhuman origins in Northern Ghana. There, we meet the source of his mean streak: gangster dad Nikolai, portrayed by another Oscar-winner, Russell Crowe, given exactly one note to play. Nikolai detests weakness.
He has two sons, Sergei and Dmitri, and he doesn’t want them to be weak. “You must never show weakness.” “Your mother was weak.” “Your brother is weak.” He browbeats his boys relentlessly, until Sergei/Kraven becomes a vicious vigilante who hunts people, and the other, Dmitri (Fred Hechinger) develops his own fantastic, chameleonic abilities and a new identity that’s teased repeatedly.
But that cinematic future isn’t promised. And Kraven the Hunter, too busy introducing characters and IP to construct a plot, seemingly didn’t get the memo that all these characters have shown up for a party that was over before they got there.
Kraven the Hunter (★☆☆☆☆) is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
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