Yes.

Directed by S.J Clarkson, Madame Web is a 2024 superhero film that is the Sony Spider-Man Universe’s follow-up to Morbius, for some reason written by the same people, because they just needed to be hired back. It follows EMT Casey Webb who after beginning to see visions of the future, tries to protect three teenage girls, as they are being targeted by Ezekiel Sims, a man with spider powers who is trying to kill the girls as he has a recurring dream of them with superpowers murdering him.

I would like to preface this review by saying that I saw Morbius in theaters and love it so much, because it is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, with decisions so baffling that it becomes so incredibly entertaining. Because of that, I was so excited for Madame Web beforehand as the trailers looked god awful and it was written by the same guys.

Madame Web may be the worst directed movie I’ve ever seen. The way shots are executed and camera movements are utilized feels so nonsensical and is so distracting to the viewer. There is a fight scene in the beginning of the movie where the camera keeps zooming in and out of the scene and moving slightly like it is an episode of The Office, and believe or not, that is not a good decision to make during a fight scene. This style is only used during the beginning and they do bring it back later as well. Because of the weird directing, fight scenes become really hard to follow, as the camera is also constantly flipping around during them. I do have to respect that this movie had a very inspired directing style, because most big blockbuster movies all look very visually derivative, and this movie was definitely not that. 

The costume design is comically awful for the most part. One of the characters wears a shirt for the majority of the movie that says “I Eat Math for Breakfast”, which doesn’t fit her personality at all, besides for the fact that she does count near the end of the movie. There is a part where Casey Webb is going to a funeral and she wears this long expensive looking red jacket, which just does not seem like the right choice of clothing to wear to a funeral. Their superhero costumes, which are in the movie for a good thirty seconds, also look really ugly. The sound in this movie is kind of insane and I don’t know why nobody is talking about it. There are several instances where a scene will be really quiet and then Ezekiel Sims will pop up out of nowhere, and suddenly it is the loudest movie ever made. It is so jarring, and I know that was the intention, but the way it is executed is just so comical, because it feels like it is another attempt to make Ezekiel really menacing, when he is so goofy feeling as a character.

So Ezekiel’s entire motivation is to kill the girls that will kill him in the future, but we are given no context to who he even is and why the girls are even going to kill him and also every time he attacks the girls, he seems to target everyone in the environment besides for the girls. Also, he coerces this hacker woman to use facial recognition technology to find the girls, but he dreamt of them, so I don’t know how that is possible. I guess he just described them to her. He must be really good at describing things. Also, the actor Tahar Rahim decided to do the weirdest accent that makes it so you cannot take him remotely seriously at any point and about half of his lines seem to be dubbed over in post production, which is very comical. Ezekial Sims is maybe the worst movie villain ever and I love him so much. 

Every acting performance in this movie is hilariously terrible. Rahim’s performance as Simms is probably the worst one, but Dakota Johnson also feels so stilted and weird when delivering every single one of her lines. Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor as the main trio of girls that Simms is trying to kill, also did awful jobs at playing convincing teenagers. Adam Scott as a young Uncle Ben is just kinda doing the same performance that he did in Parks in Recreation, but terribly. Every actor feels like they are giving a comedic performance even in really dramatic scenes, which was definitely not the intention. 

This movie has several moments where the plot comes to a screeching halt so there can be really out of place comedic scenes that are really funny, but not for the intended reasons. This movie also attempts several moments of character development to put up a disguise that the film has any substance at all, but how this character development always goes is that a character goes from being one way to immediately being another way. It feels so unnatural. The characters are just really bland overall, but in a way that is really funny, because they will give every character one character trait that they just kinda repeat over and over again. Like one character is really nerdy and not outgoing. Another is mean and makes fun of people. They aren’t real people, they’re stereotypes.

There is a scene where they play both the very generic and unmemorable eerie score that was composed for the movie, and Toxic by Britney Spears because they couldn’t choose between the two I guess. The use of Toxic does improve the scene and makes it kinda hype to watch, but I don’t think it is because the song worked with what was happening on screen well, and more so that it is just an amazing song. There are several instances of blatant product placement that I found very amusing. There is a scene where Casey is getting out of her car and the camera pans up to show a big Beyoncé advertisement on the side of a building like it’s a reveal or something. For some reason every scene where a character is driving in this movie has to also be an action scene, so Casey will just be driving and almost hit into like three cars for no reason all the time. It seems like the higher ups at Sony told the writers to make it more Spider-Man adjacent so more people would go see it, and they went about that in the laziest ways where it might as well have nothing to do with Spider-Man. 

Madame Web is a movie with awful acting, atrocious writing, and terrible directing and I highly recommend it. It is so enjoyable because of how much of a train wreck it is and I for one can’t wait to see what the writing duo of Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless do next.