Madame Web was a flop at the box office after premiering on February 14. Only earning $100 million, out of an $80 million production budget, it is the lowest-grossing Spiderman-related movie ever produced. Yet it became number one in Netflix’s top ten list after its premiere on Netflix on May 14.

The movie begins with Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) trying to find a special spider with alleged healing powers in the Amazon, but her bodyguard Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) is secretly after it too. She is also pregnant with her daughter, Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson). Sims shoots Constance and runs off with the spider, but Las Arañas (spider people living in the forest) bring her to their cave, and as she gives birth to Cassie, the spider with healing powers bites her. Cassie survives, but Constance does not. This whole sequence was supposed to set up and explain events that occur later in the movie. But it reveals too much right off the bat, and it would have been better if the audience was introduced to the villain and Cassie’s perception of her mom before showing this scene and revealing what actually happened in the Amazon. This is only the first of the many plot holes in the movie.

The movie then cuts to present-day Cassie, who is living in New York and works as a paramedic. We quickly learn that Cassie is awkward when it comes to family, having grown up in a foster care system. Her lack of empathy is noticeable when the child of a patient she transported to the hospital writes her a card and gives it to her. She is not appreciative of the gesture at all, which does not reflect well on her character, and makes it hard to like her.

One day, after a traumatic incident on the job, Cassie discovers she can sense what is about to happen in the future. The camera crew and editors did a great job with the replay moments when Cassie got the deja vu of something about to happen. Each of these scenes begins with Cassie doing something, like entering a building or listening to a conversation. But each of these moments would end as something bad, like a pigeon crashing into a window, or a person in a car accident. Suddenly, the same conversation would happen again and Cassie would realize what she had to do to avoid that misfortune. These replay scenes kept the attention and kept the movie moving forward. This plot idea of the heroine being able to stop bad things before they happen is appealing, but the writers failed to execute a coherent story using this idea because the plot becomes confusing in the second half of the movie.

Another example of the writer’s blundering is how the characters connect. Cassie has a vision when she is on the subway that the three girls aboard will be killed by Ezekiel Sims on the train. Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) have very different personalities but are united by the same thing: a tragic backstory. Cassie and the girls bond over their absent parents, which is supposed to make the audience sympathize with them, but just comes off as random and does not add anything to the story. But the biggest problem is Johnson’s acting. Each of her lines feels like she is reading off a script. No emotions, no facial expressions, no nothing. Johnson’s monotonous delivery was the subject of many memes created after the trailer and the movie were released.

This movie was another unnecessary addition to the Marvel world. It fails to deliver an entertaining story and leaves the viewer with too many questions. The villain’s motives were unclear, the character development was nonexistent and the acting was mediocre.

Save time and watch the movie trailer instead of the movie itself.

Rating: ★★