Krave The Hunter
(2024)

KRAVEN THE HUNTER 🏺

After a six-year run, Sony’s Spider-Man Spin-Off Universe has come to a screeching halt with a final film that brings one of Spider-Man’s most iconic villains to the big screen—KRAVEN THE HUNTER.

This origin story takes on Kraven’s days as a vigilante, where he uses his hatred for his father to fuel his rage into hunting down those who go after the weak, creating a new hierarchy amongst the world’s most dangerous criminals with him at the top as an apex predator.

...KRAVEN THE HUNTER is a monumental failure.

Somehow this movie had a budget of over one hundred million dollars yet couldn’t find the time to sync the voices with the movement of the characters, and then there's also the issue of the transitions not flowing with where the story was at that given moment.

There’s clearly a lack of effort and care that went into the overall story structure and quality of this movie that’s just baffling to me.

As lacking as this film is in those departments, I can’t deny that I actually enjoyed a lot of what this movie had to offer.

It earns every bit of its R rating with some of the most cutthroat, blood-splattering action sequences that had the majority of the theatre oohing and aahing in approval.

Then we have Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who fully embodies the character of Kraven and, in all honesty, deserves to don the fur vest in a movie worthy of his committed performance. He had every reason to just phone it in and use this movie as a paycheck, but there’s an angst and charm to his portrayal that this movie isn’t deserving of.

As someone who grew up as the eldest child and resented his absentee father because of the way he treated his mom, I felt I could connect with the strife between father and son in a way some people might gloss over. That’s also to give credit to Russell Crowe, who plays the part of domineering Russian mob boss father really well, even if at times it feels like Crowe and Johnson are in two totally different movies.

In the long run, I hope this is a wake-up call for studios at the helm of comic book movies to stop making these villains into redeemable characters. There’s this good guy-ification of bad guys that’s been happening, and it really does a disservice to what the character should mean to the hero they are meant to go up against.

One of the greatest comic book stories is Kraven's Last Hunt, and after seeing this, I’m thinking to myself, how do we go from what is a man with a code of honour to a hunter who goes after a superhero who saves people? I think Hollywood has forgotten that the black and white of good and bad is still as compelling as it's ever been, and we don’t need to rely on the grey for a false sense of nuance that doesn’t need to be there in the first place.

KRAVEN THE HUNTER is a pitiful production that never allows the forgivable performances to excel past the cut-and-dry nature of what will inevitably become the door-shutting finale to an extended universe of films that were never given the proper chance to succeed.

Enjoy!

5/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 1hr50mins
Where: Now Playing In Theatres

Kraven The Hunter Review (2024) The Richmond Reviewer -  December 13th, 2024

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