Madame a tangled web of inanity
One of the great blunders in recent Hollywood history involves the executives at Sony Pictures, circa 2000, rejecting a deal that would have given them the rights to every superhero in the Marvel Universe. The comic book company had just filed for bankruptcy and was in desperate need of a cash infusion. So, when Sony exec Yair Landau was sent to inquire about their studio obtaining the rights to Spiderman, Marvel chief Ike Perlmutter had an alternate proposition for him – take all our characters for $25 million. When Landau reported the offer to his bosses they rejected it, saying, "No one gives a @#$% about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for Spider-Man." This deal was closed for $10 million. As for the rest of the characters, apparently a great many people gave a @#$% about them.
Ever since realizing their mistake, Sony has been trying to jump on the superhero bandwagon with various incarnations of the webslinger as well as films focused on ancillary characters in his universe, which they have the rights to. The result has been misguided efforts like the overblown Venom (2018) and its sequel, the misguided Morbius (2022) and now, the absolutely awful Madame Web, a mess of a movie that may have a future as a cult classic.
A prologue takes us to the Amazon where a pregnant scientist, Constance (Kerry Bishe), is searching for a rare spider with healing abilities. She's bitten by one of them, which passes on its abilities to her unborn child. However, a betrayal by her guide, Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim), leads to her death, though her daughter survives and is named Cassandra (brush up on your Greek mythology to catch the significance of the name...)
Jump ahead to 2002 and Cassie (Dakota Johnson) is a New York City paramedic who has always been, socially, a step behind everyone else. On a call one day, she has a near death experience which unlocks some latent psychic abilities. Now she can see the future, something she has in common with Ezekiel, who has come to the Big Apple to track down Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeny), Anya Corazon (Isabel Merced) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor). He has foreseen that these three teenagers will kill him, and he wants to beat them to the punch. Fortunately, Cassie can see what is to play out and comes to their rescue.
Overplotted and underwritten, the film contains some of the most simplistic dialogue in recent memory as well as character actions that make little sense. Johnson does her level best to bring a bit of fun to this, and she's the best part of the movie, while her young counterparts accord themselves as well as they can. However, even the most skilled thespians would be unable to salvage this lifeless, desperate product. In the end, I can't help but blame that nameless executive at Sony for rejecting the deal to control all of the Marvel characters. Had he done that, he likely wouldn't have had to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to build a movie around an ancillary, disposable character. In theaters.
No life in this Frankenstein
Sometimes, a film I've seen is either so good or so bad, I have so much to say about it that I have a hard time getting started. I've been stuck on how to begin my review of Zelda Williams' Lisa Frankenstein for quite some time. Misguided and inept from the word "go," this is one of the most lifeless films I've ever had the misfortune of sitting through. Poorly conceived from the start, the lack of energy throughout is truly remarkable. I would think that working on a feature film would generate an inherent sense of excitement that would translate to the screen. If this is so, Frankenstein trumps this notion so convincingly, one would think such a task was akin to being sentenced to life imprisonment in a Russian gulag.
So misguided and lazy, I think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science should be notified of this abomination and consider taking back the Oscar they once bestowed on writer Diablo Cody. That Frankenstein sprang from the same mind that produced Juno, Jennifer's Body, and Young Adult, is as incongruous as Larry the Cable Guy at the MET Gala. A pastiche of elements from her own work, Tim Burton's films, a dash of the Universal Horror movies, and just a bit of Mary Shelley, the foundation here is sound but what's constructed upon it is flimsy, disjointed and dull.
Having witnessed her mother's death at the hands of an axe murderer, Lisa (Kathryn Newton) is doing her best to deal with her trauma. Her becoming withdrawn is to be expected. Her hanging out in an old, abandoned cemetery is something else altogether. She becomes fascinated with the grave of a young man named Frankenstein, decorating and leaving offerings upon it. One evening, during a violent thunderstorm, it's struck by lightning, reanimating the corpse (Cole Sprouse) within. The Creature finds Lisa, who realizes he's a kindred spirit and hides him out in her closet.
That she is able to keep this rancid being hidden from her clueless father (Joe Chrest), callous stepmother (Carla Guigno) and well-meaning stepsister (Liza Soberano) is a potentially comedic situation that, like so many things in the movie, doesn't pan out. There's a listlessness to the entire film; I've never seen performers simply go through the motions as those involved here do. I don't think the fault lies with the actors, but rather with Williams. Not only is there a flatness to the visuals, but the whole tone and pace is tedious. A world replete with gothic images is rendered with little imagination, a nightmare seen through the eyes of Norman Rockwell.
Equally troubling is Williams' inability to create a darkly comic tone. A rash of murders and maimings take place as Lisa comes up with the idea of replacing her new boy toy's vital parts, one by one. It's tricky to render such acts as humorous, but it can be done. Here, the deaths come off as callous and, at times a bit disturbing, not the feel you want for a parody of 1980s teen rom-coms.
To be sure, Newton does her best throughout to inject a bit of life in this D.O.A. feature but nothing can save this muddled mishmash. In the end, as a whole, the various parts cobbled from other sources remain inert. In theaters.
