Madame Web

Directed by S. J. Clarkson, Madame Web follows Dakota Johnson’s Cassandra Webb who unlocks psychic powers after surviving a car accident. Filmmaker S. J. Clarkson, armed with a script written alongside Claire Parker, Matt Sazama, and Burk Sharpless, delivers a progressively underwhelming endeavor that fares best within its decent-enough opening stretch, as the movie, which benefits from the agreeable efforts of such engaging periphery players as Adam Scott, Zosia Mamet, and Mike Epps, moves at a fairly brisk pace and admittedly does contain a small handful of genuinely engaging sequences – with this particularly true of a terrific interlude wherein Cassandra has visions of several deaths aboard a subway car. It’s clear, then, that Madame Web‘s tenuous grasp on the viewer is loosened significantly once it moves into its episodic, meandering midsection, and it doesn’t help, certainly, that the picture boasts a growing emphasis on the exploits of three tiresome, seriously grating teenagers (Sydney Sweeney’s Julia, Isabela Merced’s Anya, and Celeste O’Connor’s Mattie) – with Clarkson’s sluggish approach paving the way for a series of hopelessly underwhelming and uninteresting digressions (eg Cassandra teaches said teenagers how to perform CPR). By the time the lackluster, anticlimactic finale rolls around, Madame Web has cemented its place as yet another misguided comic-book adaptation that wears out its welcome to a distressing extent. (And this is to say nothing of Tahar Rahim’s laughably inept turn as the lame villain.)

*1/2 out of ****