Cinematic universes being what they are, it’s impossible to talk about any single installment in isolation without connecting it to the franchise from whence it sprang. So I suppose this is as good a place to start this review as any: Kraven The Hunter is mostly better than Morbius. The bar may be subterranean at this point, but Kraven is slightly more certain of its main character, its tone, and the story it’s trying to tell — although it also lacks anything half as interesting as Matt Smith in the mix so I dunno. On the sliding scale of the Sony Spider-Man Universe (which, in case you’ve forgotten, doesn’t actually include Spider-Man), your choices are “so inept its funny,” “just kind of a slog,” or “the first two Venom flicks.” I’d rank Kraven squarely in the middle of the pack — a slog — and if this truly is the last chapter of this iteration of Sony’s Marvel-ish franchise, then that feels about right. It has just enough working parts to make you mildly curious about what could have been, for like a second, before the boredom sets in again. Boredom with the movie, yes, but also with Sony and franchises and comic books and antiheroes and “content” and the air moving into and out of your lungs. Isn’t there some old friend you’ve been meaning to touch base with? A real human connection to invest in, instead of this movie? Even Sony doesn’t care about Kraven The Hunter! They dumped it in theaters less than two months after Venom: The Last Dance and there aren’t even any end credit scenes!
In fact, why bother reading this review? Go call your mom and tell her you love her or something.
Still here? Oh well, I tried. For the record, those working parts are mostly Aaron Taylor-Johnson, his abs, and the R-rated action set pieces that director J.C. Chandor (Triple Frontier) throws those abs at wholeheartedly. Taylor-Johnson plays Sergei Kravenoff, the son of a big time Russian drug tzar named Nikolai (Russell Crowe) who decides to leave the family and become a hunter… OF BAD GUYS. Instead of being a big game hunter like he was in the comics, Sergei has been reimagined as a sort of yassified Punisher by way of the Village People (not a complaint). The movie opens with him infiltrating a Siberian prison to assassinate a mob boss, then escape into the tundra. It’s a promising start, showcasing the character’s reputation and skills, and then the movie rewinds to show his origins. As a teenager he got his powers (heightened senses, physical prowess) from a lion attack and a life-saving mystic potion, the latter of which is supplied by Calypso, who grows up to be Ariana DeBose. From there he moves to the wilderness and finds his calling taking out poachers, and then the people who hired those poachers, and all the way up the criminal underworld food pyramid. Somewhere along the way he decides to go by Kraven, though criminals know him as “The Hunter.”
In the present, Sergei reconnects with his half-brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), a lounge singer who is desperate for their father’s approval. Kraven’s prison escapade has left a power vacuum that their father would like to fill — only he’s beaten to the chase by Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola), a nerdy rival with a grudge against Nikolai and a skin condition that transforms him into another classic Spidey villain called the Rhino. Then Rhino figures out that the feared Hunter is in reality Nikolai’s wayward son, and he realizes that eliminating Kraven before Kraven comes for him is best way to protect himself and hurt Nikolai.
It’s not a bad plot, albeit convoluted, though the execution is a typical Sony rearranged-in-post mess. Criminals know that Kraven has a list of targets, for example, and they fear being added to that list. That reputation precedes Kraven actually finding his list of targets. Kraven tracks down Calypso as an adult, using nothing but his extrasensory skills I guess, and asks for her help as a lawyer in locating his upcoming targets. Because she has informants? Which… if he could find her, he clearly doesn’t need any help! DeBose, to her credit, leverages the impressive extent of her charisma to make Calypso more than a walking info-dump in chunky earrings, almost, until the telltale scene where her dialogue was rerecorded and Sony edited her mouth to make it match. Poorly.
In addition to the Rhino, Kraven The Hunter set up Dmitri’s evolution into the villain Chameleon, and includes another comics character called The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) – a sort of black ops assassin who, in this iteration, has eyeballs that stop time or something (he was just a skilled agent in the comics). There are also several mentions of a doctor in New York named Miles Warren, the man who gives Rhino and Chameleon their powers. Marvel fans know him as The Jackal, the character responsible for developing all the Spider-Man clones. I can’t help but picture Sony as an amateur magician, struggling to impress a roomful of cake-stuffed five-year-olds at a birthday party. POOF! How about a bunch of spider-ladies who don’t have powers yet, but will? No? POOF! How ‘bout a cosmic threat, the father of the Symbiotes, as a path forward for this franchise? Still no good? OK well POOF! Here’s a tease of a classic Spidey villain, a scientist who makes clones in the comics and could lead to the Clone Saga, potentially, except they won’t be clones of Spider-Man because we can’t do that?
The problem is that we’re not kindergarteners and honestly it’s not that hard to impress us. Just have a plan. Tell a decent story. Be consistent. Despite the unlikely success of Venom early on, Sony’s universe of Spidey-adjacent characters has devolved into an experimental free-for-all, just throwing options at the audience to see what sticks. What seemed like the smartest decision they ever made – working with the MCU to make Tom Holland’s Spider-Man a success — doomed the rest of their franchise. Without Spidey in this universe to connect these characters, Sony was left trying to tell stories about villains with no one to fight against. Venom worked because it eked out its own genre niche early on – a buddy comedy (then rom-com) — but Morbius and Kraven fell into the antihero trap of not quite knowing what makes an antihero work. That is to say, Sony introduced the characters in films that positioned them as heroes, not bad guys, only to pivot in the final moments because they happened to be killers. The franchise lacked the conviction to create a universe full of morally gray characters that happen to intersect, opting instead to try and hold space for the possibility of pitting these “villains” against Spider-Man somewhere down the road after already expecting us to root for them.
That road seems to have ended for now, and it’s for the best. Sony will focus its attention on making Spider-Man movies and whatever this “universe” is appears to die here, with Kraven. So is it worth watching? I guess that depends on how much self-respect you have. It’s fine, the action is bloody and pretty fun, and the actors are all bringing their A-games even if the material doesn’t warrant it. Seeing Crowe and Nivola in particular resist the urge to phone-in their performances when the characters are so ill-conceived is kind of impressive, I suppose. You could even try taking a drink every time someone says “hunter” and see what happens!
Maybe if Kraven weren’t a part of this doomed cinematic universe it could have found some footing, but the weight of expectations and stench of failure proves too much for this middling action romp to withstand. As it is, it’s simply a boring end to a bad era. A fart in the wind.