Kraven the Hunter review – put it out of its misery

In the 10 short months since I wrote my Madame Web review pon­der­ing the poi­soned chal­ice of a super­hero role in 2024, both Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans – the pil­lars upon which the MCU was built – have announced their immi­nent return to Mar­vel movies. Per­haps it’s too ear­ly to judge whether this is yet anoth­er exam­ple of wheels fran­ti­cal­ly spin­ning in the block­buster mud, but the luke­warm recep­tion to every sin­gle super­hero prop­er­ty since Spi­der-Man: No Way Home seems to sug­gest the cen­tre can­not hold.

Sony, for their part, have been try­ing to work out how to make a suc­cess­ful super­hero film for the past decade. Although they own the rights to Spi­der-Man, the com­plex nature of their licens­ing agree­ment with Mar­vel means there are cer­tain char­ac­ters (includ­ing Spidey him­self) they can’t use with­out mutu­al sign-off. Now, Sony own the rights to 900 com­ic book char­ac­ters – so what’s the issue? Well…most of those 900 char­ac­ters are relat­ed in some way to Spi­der-Man. Exes, fam­i­ly mem­bers, class­mates, col­leagues, alter­nate real­i­ty ver­sions, and of course, vil­lains. Extract­ing them from Spi­der-Man is dif­fi­cult when many exist pure­ly with­in his orbit.

It did work, how­ev­er, with the Ven­om fran­chise, which net­ted Sony over $1 bil­lion at the box office despite a luke­warm crit­i­cal response. A pas­sion project of Tom Hardy, it’s undoubt­ed­ly his, erm, unique per­for­mance that gave the Ven­om films their spark – some­thing very much not present in their oth­er spin-off attempts, Mor­bius and Madame Web. But third time’s a charm, right? What could pos­si­bly go wrong with…Kraven the Hunter?

Most famous as the Spidey vil­lain obsessed with pelts and poach­ing, Sergei ​‘Kraven’ Kravi­noff has a long his­to­ry with the web slinger dat­ing back to 1964 and is con­stant­ly caus­ing him both­er despite his lack of super­pow­ers. His moti­va­tion is to be the world’s great­est hunter, which for some rea­son, makes him view Spi­der-Man as the ulti­mate prey. (Has he tried putting a glass over him and cov­er­ing it with a postcard?)

Updat­ed for a solo cin­e­mat­ic adven­ture, Kraven is played by Aaron Tay­lor John­son – who Hol­ly­wood con­tin­u­al­ly seem unable to work out what to do with – and now devel­ops lion-relat­ed super­pow­ers as a teenag­er after being attacked by a big cat dur­ing a hunt­ing trip in North Ghana with his broth­er Dim­itri and father Niko­lai (Rus­sell Crowe in a cra­vat doing a Russ­ian accent). He’s saved by a young Calyp­so (played as an adult by Ari­ana DeBose) who gives him a potion her grand­moth­er gift­ed her five min­utes pre­vi­ous­ly. After wak­ing up with lion pow­ers, Sergei swift­ly rejects his father’s invi­ta­tion to inher­it his gang­ster empire and flees to the Russ­ian coun­try­side, where he appears to live unsu­per­vised for the next 16 years in a Pin­ter­est-wor­thy con­vert­ed obser­va­tion tow­er. Also, he can tele­path­i­cal­ly com­mu­ni­cate with animals.

Mean­while, geeky Alek­sei Syt­se­vich (Alessan­dro Nivola, ham­my) has been bid­ing his time after a slight from Niko­lai dur­ing that ill-fat­ed hunt­ing trip. He’s adopt­ed the mon­ick­er of Rhi­no fol­low­ing a pro­ce­dure which gave him impen­e­tra­ble grey skin and wants to replace the Kravi­noff at the top of the crim­i­nal food chain. He enlists the help of a mys­te­ri­ous assas­sin known as The For­eign­er (Christo­pher Abbott, dis­as­so­ci­at­ing) who has his own per­son­al beef with Kraven, and kid­naps his broth­er Dim­itri (Fred Hechinger, hav­ing a weird 2024) in an attempt to make Niko­lai look bad. It’s up to Kraven to hunt them down.

It’s all des­per­ate­ly sil­ly. Per­haps that would be less of an issue if the film’s writ­ers, stars and direc­tor leaned into it a lit­tle – as in the Ven­om films – but there’s an air of seri­ous­ness about Kraven the Hunter that makes it a slog that can’t be saved by a sur­pris­ing num­ber of vio­lent exe­cu­tions, includ­ing one involv­ing a bear trap. It doesn’t help that Kraven lacks a sense of pur­pose beyond hunt­ing (“peo­ple” he clar­i­fies; he’s an ani­mal lover in this iter­a­tion) and the rela­tion­ship between the Kravi­noff broth­ers feels painful­ly unde­vel­oped to the extent oth­er char­ac­ters have to explain how much they care about each oth­er. Expo­si­tion isn’t so much clunky as it is vio­lent­ly hacked up onto the car­pet like a hairball.

If there’s one thing to say in Kraven the Hunter’s defence, it’s that it isn’t quite as bad as Mor­bius or Madame Web. At least every­one here seems to be enjoy­ing them­selves a lit­tle rather than look­ing like they’re doing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice at a fail­ing the­atre. But pro­fes­sion­al­ism can’t make up for a weak plot, com­i­cal­ly bad ani­mal CGI, cringy dia­logue and the unfor­tu­nate truth that Aaron Tay­lor John­son looks like the Night­man when he goes Beast Mode.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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