Word on the street is that Sony has given up the tangential Spiderman villain universe of films… and what better day for this to get out than the day Kraven the Hunter limps into movie theaters. A white flag of defeat waved to encourage us not to bother… but that’s just not me. I’m riding this bomb straight into the ground.

So Kraven the Hunter is about a Spiderman villain currently pretending to be a hero because Spidey is on-loan to Disney. He’s a guy with the powers of lions, and tigers, and bears… and monkeys? And spiders? And Spider-monkeys? And the ability to transform himself into a bad CGI parkour stunt double. Actually, I guess he’s the world’s greatest hunter, a moniker not noticeable in this film.

This flick has a plot but it’s one of the biggest shrugs there is. Maybe it’s deeply meaningful to comic book fans of Kraven (who exist?) but not to this guy. I kept waiting for the third act reveal to make me think there was something meaty to the plot. But, no, just… this mash.

The movie sort of starts with an over-extended backstory of Kraven where he gets bit by a radioactive lion (ok, it wasn’t radioactive). The kid playing him is pretty good. But he eventually grows into an Aaron Taylor-Johnson who is remarkably bad. But not nearly as bad – and utterly flat – as Ariana DeBose who might be going for the “I don’t give a shit” award previously held by Dakota Johnson in Madame Web.

They are surrounded by an amalgam of incidental villains, each taking up too much screen time. In fact, Kraven vanishes from his own movie so they can hand-wave motivations and storylines for at least four of these losers. One of them is The Rhino who I at least know… but the rest seem like C tier Marvel baddies… including some who are being set up for hypothetical sequels. Odds are low.

The special effects are pretty bad too. Someday Hollywood will figure out how to make convincing CGI animals but today will not be that day. For a movie that occasionally demands animal actors, only the dog was real and the rest were mediocre fakes at best.

This is the worst of the Sony “can we be in the Spiderman business too?” flailing franchise… yes, worse than Morbius and Madame Web. At least Web knew it was a goofy comic book movie and even Morbius occasionally let its actors have fun. Kraven is way too confident in its bad-assery to even think about cracking wise. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t laugh… it was just at the expense of some deeply terrible dialog, line readings, and one of the most awkward exposition scenes ever.

Kraven the Hunter goes out like it was fated. It’s poorly acted, it looks pretty bad, and it has an inexplicable shrug of a plot. Plus delusions of a sequel that just ain’t happening. Pass on it… you know you want to. And if you are like me and have to see them all, go for it. Ride that bomb into the dirt.

Score: 57