I cannot recall any superhero movie in recent memory having less buzz around it than Kraven the Hunter. Even Madame Web and Joker 2 promised to be train wrecks, but everything I knew in advance about this movie seemed bland and uninspired. This proved to be an accurate impression, for Kraven the Hunter is bland and uninspired. This is unfortunate, given the character from the comics is one of Spider-Man’s most interesting enemies.

Unlike the rest of characters making up the original Sinister Six, Kraven the Hunter was not a career criminal. Sergei Kravinoff was a Russian big game hunter who saw Spider-Man as the ultimate challenge of his talents. Apart from some B&E setting up ambushes and once kidnapping Gwen Stacy while in the Savage Land to be his mate (Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #104, True Believer!) he never really committed any crimes. Given that, the idea of reworking him into an anti-hero for a solo film is not entirely unreasonable.

Unfortunately, despite a charismatic actor in the title role, Kraven the Hunter fails to entertain on almost every level. Despite barely being two hours long, Kraven the Hunter is horribly paced and padded. Unlike Morbius, there is no tie to the greater Spider-Verse. There is barely any tie to the Spider-Man comics or characters that nominally inspired this mess. If you have the opportunity to see this movie for free, I would not take it. The kindest thing I can say about Kraven the Hunter is that I didn’t have to fight to stay awake while watching it like I did during Morbius.

This concludes the Spoiler-Free portion of the review. Keep reading after the embedded video if you want to know more details.

The movie opens on a transport approaching a Russian gulag. It is here we are introduced to Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).He calls himself Kraven, but the criminal underworld has dubbed him “The Hunter,” due to his apparent ability to track and kill anyone anywhere. This opening sequence (which Sony released for free on-line and can be viewed above) shows Kraven in action and how he broke into the aforementioned gulag to get to his latest prey.

A flashback to 16 years earlier explains Kraven’s motivations. His father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe) is a Russian gangster, who abuses his wife and sons. However, to make it perfectly clear that he’s a bad guy, he’s also a trophy hunter, who pulls his sons out of school to hunt a legendary lion instead of mourning their mother.

Said lion, rendered with horrible CGI, nearly kills the young Sergei. Thankfully, he is saved by the timely arrival of a girl named Calypso, whose grandmother just happens to be a Voodoo priestess and just happened to give her a Greater Potion of Healing that morning. This, coupled with the lion’s blood mixing with his own, apparently gives Sergei superhuman strength, agility, and heightened senses.

Cut back to today and Calypso (Ariana DeBose) is now an idealistic lawyer. Kraven approaches her about helping him find those bad people even his powers can’t track. Kraven also checks in on his innocent younger brother Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who has a talent for singing and mimicking voices. However, when a rival of their father called The Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) abducts Dmitri, Kraven’s hunt becomes decidedly more personal. Unfortunately, in addition to the Rhino and his men, Kraven must contend with a mysterious assassin called The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott). who has his own reasons for hunting Kraven.

There’s a decent story at the core of Kraven the Hunter’s script. Indeed, the main problem is that there’s too much story. Setting Kraven up as an animal lover who hunts poachers is a solid idea. However, this only comes up in one scene, and is in addition to Kraven’s killing gangsters in a desperate bid to be a better man than his father. Aaron Taylor-Johnson does the best he can to portray this conflict, but the script has him spend more time looking tormented than actually discussing his issues. Given the dialogue, that’s probably for the best.

The rest of the ensemble are criminally underdeveloped by comparison, and aren’t much like their comic book counterparts beyond their names. Calypso is probably the most changed in this regard. In the comics, she was a Voodoo priestess, plain and simple. It is unclear if the film Calypso is a lawyer because they thought the original character was problematic or because every love interest in superhero media is either a lawyer or a reporter. The heck of it is there’s no real romance between Kraven and Calypso. Just as there’s no explanation for her unexplained talent for archery, her packing her own superhero costume when she’s forced to go into hiding on short notice, or any of the other convenient things about her character just before she disappears from the movie completely.

In retrospect, the chief thing I remember about Kraven the Hunter was waiting. I spent half an hour waiting for the main character to show up again after the flashback to his youth started. I waited another half hour for the actual plot to start. By the end of the movie, I was checking the clock every five to ten minutes to see how much longer until it was over. I was happy once it was. Just as I am happy that Sony has apparently abandoned any future plans to make more movies with the Spider-Man characters but no Spider-Man.