'Madame Web' review: Superhero side story is comically bad

Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

"Madame Web" is an utterly baffling comic book to feature adaptation, built out of an utterly baffling series of wrongheaded moves. It's not just a dreadful movie, it's an incomprehensible one, the culmination of so many misguided decisions that it's confounding.

A lot has to go astray to come up with something as mystifying as "Madame Web," and it's not often when so many things at the movies go this phenomenally, spectacularly bad. If anything, it could become a case study in how to ground a franchise before it begins.

The extended series of "Spider-Man" adjacent titles have produced their share of stinkers in recent years — the "Venom" titles, "Morbius" — but "Madame Web" represents a new low for superhero content writ large. So at least it has infamy going for it.

Dakota Johnson, who at times appears openly disdainful of the material, stars as Cassie Webb, an EMT worker in New York City. Her mother died during childbirth, while she was in the Peruvian Amazon searching for a rare spider whose venom somehow holds the key to potentially curing untold human diseases. After locating the spider she was shot by her assistant Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim), who stole her research — and the precious spider — and left her for dead. Cassie was born with the help of a race of spider-people who live in the treetops. You know, normal stuff.

Now it's 2003 and Cassie is beginning to have flash-forward visions of the future, not long term, but only about 10-20 seconds or so ahead of the present. (Nicolas Cage had similar powers, although they were non-spider related, in 2007's "Next.") At the same time Ezekiel, who has apparently not aged in 30 years, is having visions of his future, of his own death at the hands of three young women in spandex spider-suits. His premonitions are detailed enough that he can make out their faces exactly, and from his descriptions he has his assistant Amaria (Zosia Mamet) hunt for them using emerging NSA technology that can track anyone, anywhere by hacking into a complex surveillance grid. And this is all pre-smart phones to boot.

Those three ladies are Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor), unrelated teens who are all randomly together on a train when Cassie, who is on board as well, has a vision of them being attacked. Cassie hastily convinces them to de-board the train and come with her and soon they're on the run from Ezekiel, who is dressed in a dark spider-suit and exhibits super strength and the ability to climb walls and ceilings and wants them dead. Time to go!

These are all the somewhat standard machinations of a superhero movie — powers, danger, all-knowing tech — and no one is holding them up to the scrutiny of real world litmus tests. But there's a concrete-level stiffness in "Madame Web's" presentation, where no one in any situation acts or behaves like a living, breathing human being would act or behave, or that anyone who's ever observed human interactions would recognize as relatable human behavior. These are characters who are there only so the sponsored products (Pepsi, specifically, but Budweiser, too) won't look lonely on screen, or to mention related content tie-ins (Cassie, apparently, is a big "American Idol" fan) in casual conversation.

Should we even go on? Cassie steals a yellow cab and takes the three girls out to the middle of the woods, where she figures they'll be safe — three teen girls in the middle of the woods, what could possibly go wrong? — and leaves them there and asks them to stay put while she drives back to the city to figure some things out, including how to hone her powers. But they get hungry and wander to a nearby diner where they flirt with boys and dance on tables to Britney Spears' "Toxic," which wouldn't be released as a single until early 2004, but pop music continuity is honestly the least of "Madame Web's" problems.

A sense of tension, humor or purpose, those are the big picture areas where "Madame Web" lacks. There's no excitement in the quick-cut visuals, which are filmed with reality TV aesthetics. There's no feel to the characters, who are lost when they're not holding or otherwise engaging with Pepsi products or signage. There's no logic in the script, credited to first-time feature helmer S. J. Clarkson and three others. And there's nothing driving the story forward, or an indicator of where this story fits into any larger universe, our own or otherwise.

It all seems like an overly elaborate backstory just to arrive at the place where the characters don their spider-suits, which doesn't arrive until the very end. By that time "Madame Web" has spun viewers in circles and left them with nothing to hang on to, not even the campiness one would hope for in a production this far off the rails. Experiences this lousy should at least be fun. But "Madame Web" is so comically bad it can't even manage to get being bad right.

'Madame Web'

GRADE: D-

Rated PG-13: for violence/action and language

Running time: 116 minutes

In theaters

agraham@detroitnews.com