Rating: 2/5
Peru, 1973 Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) is a pregnant woman searching for a spider with unique peptides that could change modern medicine. When she finds it, however, her bodyguard, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), shoots her and steals the spider for his nefarious purposes. Las Arañas, a tribe of people with spider-like powers, tries to save Constance by letting the fancy spider bite her. Though they do not save her, they rescue the baby.
New York, 2003 Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic. Her co-worker and closest friend is Ben Parker (Adam Scott). After a dangerous rescue, a car traps Cassie and drags her into the water. There, she sees unfamiliar images, all bound by an invisible web.
Ben saves her, but Cassie experiences déjà vu. After a trillion hours, she connects the dots and realizes her power to predict the future. While trying to understand what is happening to her, she sees a man trying to kill three women — Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Mattie (Celeste O’Connor). That man is Ezekiel Sims.
Every night, Ezekiel has the same nightmare of the women killing him. With the powers granted to him by the spider he stole and the aid of hacker Amaria (Zosia Mamet), Ezekiel intends to find those women and kill them before they kill him. What he didn’t expect, however, was that Cassie would see his plan and thwart it.
Cassie tries to protect Julia, Anya, and Mattie while learning about her powers and their origin. The truth will grant her access to LIMITLESS POWER.
Let’s get this out of the way. This isn’t a great movie. The pacing is unbearable, the dialogue is every cliche you can think of, and Tahar Rahim may be the worst actor I’ve seen in a movie with this big a budget.
That said, this isn’t the dumpster fire everyone is saying it is. Cassie Webb is a breath of fresh air in these Marvel movies. She leans close to Jessica Jones-esque sarcasm and groundedness, never turning into the typical dead-eyed superhero. This humanity defines the Spider-Man universe and explains Peter Parker’s enduring popularity in comics.
The first act, while silly, is engaging. I was tentatively on board and ready to see where the movie took me. The second act was a fucking slog, with several prolonged seconds of watching someone decide to do something. But there is a moment in the third act that I won’t spoil. When it happened, I leaned forward and said, “I’m in.”
Ezekiel makes the dumbest choices possible to avoid succeeding at his goal. Repeatedly, he could have killed the three women but does something inexplicable instead. Also, whoever dubbed Tahar Rahim’s lines made him sound like a cheap Giallo character. I don’t think you see his mouth move once in sync with his lines.
The product placement in the movie is hilarious — most notable to me were the Pepsi products. The labels always faced the camera, and characters held drinks in bizarre ways to ensure they never obscured the label. Also, the Pepsi-Cola plant in Long Island City plays a prominent role in the movie.
The 2003 fashion and music are delightful. If you are my age, you may feel they didn’t do much to establish 2003. But I think, like most people, we get blinded to just how different contemporary culture is from our youth.
I’ll be honest — I want to see the sequel. I think it will be worse than this, and I will regret seeing it.
While I didn’t see Morbius, folks I saw this movie with confirmed that this is better than it.
Overall, I liked this movie more than most Marvel things I’ve seen outside of Spider-verse.