Kraven the Hunter review

KRAVEN THE HUNTER: 

DESPITE A BLOODY R RATING, THIS SPIDER-MAN SPIN-OFF FEELS MORE LIKE PREY THAN PREDATOR! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: * ½ out of 4

COLUMBIA PICTURES AND MARVEL

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and The Rhino in Kraven the Hunter

 

            Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass 1 and 2, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Bullet Train) returns to comic books and superheroes/villains in Kraven the Hunter, the latest film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe consisting of movies based on Spider-Man characters that are separate from previous “Spider-Verses” and without the use of Spider-Man himself. The film is directed by J.C. Chandor (Margin Call, All is Lost, A Most Violent Year) and based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. 

This little experiment Sony has pulled in-between their collaborations with Disney/Marvel on the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies and their animated Spider-Verse films hasn’t exactly won over many audiences. The Venom movies starring Tom Hardy are technically the best regarded in Sony’s universe while Morbius and Madame Web are among the worst of the genre. 

            However, Kraven the Hunter did have something to set it apart from the rest of the Sony Spider-Man Universefilms when it was being made and that is it was going to have an R rating (The rest of the movies were rated PG-13) like the Deadpool movies and Logan. This was something I initially gave the first Venom movie a lot of flak for because I felt it was trying to be an R-rated movie that was watered-down to PG-13 to appeal to a general audience. 

            Despite that, the movie did not look good to me when I saw the trailer last year before it was delayed. It just looked like another bad Sony Spider-Man spin-off with the studio once again being clueless of what to do with the Spider-Man IP, now with blood, gore, and fuck. 

            I should also make this clear, I know very little about the Kraven the Hunter character as I’ve never read any of the Spider-Man comics featuring him. Most of my knowledge of Kraven came from the animated shows, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (2003) and The Spectacular Spider-Man as well as the Spider-Man 2 video game for PlayStation 5. 

            I had low expectations with this movie given Sony’s track record with the previous films in this series, but I tried to be open to it. Maybe Kraven the Hunter can finally break the mold or at the very least be an enjoyable watch with alcohol in my system…no, not quite. 

            For the record, this movie is better than Morbius and Madame Web and there are times where it can be entertaining during the action. But it’s still another failed Spider-Man villain spin-off from Sony that misses the point of the character and wastes the potential it might have had; on top of that it’s remarkably dull. 

            The film follows Sergei Kravinoff (Johnson), a hunter whose complicated relationship with his estranged gangster father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe-Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, The Nice Guys) starts him down a path of vengeance after a group of mercenaries led by The Rhino (Alessandro Nivola-Face/Off, Jurassic Park III, The Many Saints of Newark) kidnap his half-brother, Dimitri (Fred Hechinger-Eighth Grade, Thelma, Gladiator II). As he starts axing people off on his list in brutal ways, he begins his descent into the greatest and most-feared hunter in the world, Kraven the Hunter. 

            The film also stars Ariana DeBose (West Side Story (2021), Argylle, Love Hurts) as Calypso Ezili, Christopher Abbott (A Most Violent Year, First Man, Poor Things) as The Foreigner, and Yuri Kolokolnikov (Game of Thrones, The Americans, Tenet) as Seymon Chorney. 

            Overall, Kraven the Hunter may not be the worst of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe films and Aaron Taylor-Johnson honestly isn’t that bad in the movie. But it’s still a pretty lackluster comic book film that leaves no impression once it ends aside from a few satisfying gory kills. 

            I will give this movie a little credit that some of the action is fun to watch like a scene where Kraven is chasing a car full of bad guys that actually is pretty exhilarating and another sequence where mercenaries are being chopped, smashed, and sliced in the jungle by Kraven’s traps while looking for him. That’s already a step up from Madame Web, at least this movie has some memorable action scenes. 

            The action can be fun at times, but the CGI is horrendous with animals looking more like stuff you’d see in Jumanji rather than a violent, R-rated, comic book movie with no real weight to anything. This film’s version of The Rhino may be more comic accurate than Paul Giamatti from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but it looks more like a poorly-animated Hulk with a rhino horn on his head and it doesn’t feel as satisfying to see Kraven fight him because he’s all CGI except when he’s human. 

            The movie also has this drab look in terms of cinematography that’s just not fun to watch for a long period of time. I know it’s supposed to be darker in tone compared to other Spider-Man films, but it ironically makes it more tedious than effective. 

            I don’t buy him as the infamous Spider-Man villain, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson is trying his hardest to make something out of this performance. I think he’s a very underrated actor and even when he’s in subpar material like this, I admire the fact that he gives his all and doesn’t phone it in, that dishonor goes to Ariana DeBose sadly. 

            I’ve seen DeBose give good performances before in other projects, but a lot of her line deliveries felt very stilted here and there’s even one moment where it sounds like she’s just reading a line off the script. I guess it’s still better than Dakota Johnson’s exposition dump from Madame Web. 

            In an age where Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: No Way Home are popular; it baffles me that Sony can be so creatively empty with their Spider-Man IP a lot of the time with films like this certainly not helping matters. I keep hearing this might be the last of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe and if that’s the case then hopefully, this will be a wake-up call for Sony to start taking their Spider-Man film rights more seriously. 

            Spider-Man is Sony’s most successful movie franchise so, wouldn’t it make sense for them to put as much thought and effort into it as they can? I really don’t care what universe it takes place in at the end of the day, just give me good Spider-Man movies and I’ll be happy. 

            Kraven the Hunter is the least bad of the non-Venom Sony Spider-Man spin-offs, but that is far from a recommendation. It’s neither hilariously bad nor insultingly bad enough to even take a gander at, it sits right up there with this year’s version of The Crow as one of the most unremarkable CBMs of the year.