Kraven the Hunter will make you long for a Venom movie

Ian Sandwell

11 December 2024 at 3:00 pm·5-min read

aaron taylor johnson, kraven the hunter — Kraven the Hunter review Sony Pictures

At one point in Kraven the Hunter, a location card pops up to tell us we're "Outside London" because, it seems, even the movie is confused about exactly what is happening when and where.

Much like Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter finally comes to cinemas this Friday after multiple release-date delays, and with heavy signs of changes in the edit. If these were aimed at salvaging it, they probably only broke it further.

Once upon a time, it was meant to arrive before both Madame Web and Venom: The Last Dance. But now that it's finally here, Kraven the Hunter reportedly marks the final outing (for now) in the ill-fated Sony's Spider-Man Universe which, for unfortunate licensing reasons, could never feature actual Spider-Man.

And you don't even need Spider-Sense to know that Kraven the Hunter is not very good, ending the universe with a fitting whimper.

The plot, at its core, is a simple father-son tale as Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) does everything he can to not be his father Nikolai (Russell Crowe). Where Nikolai is a gangster who will do anything to win, Sergei – under the alias of Kraven – does everything he can to stop the bad guys winning.

This inevitably puts Kraven in the sights of Russian mercenary Aleksei Sytsevich, aka Rhino, who wants to be the big dog in town (sorry for mixing animal metaphors). Add in a threat to Kraven's brother Dmitri, and Kraven has to decide just how far his code stretches in order to save the only person he loves.

As plots for origin stories go, you can see how Kraven the Hunter might have made a better movie. The problem is that, seemingly aware it was doomed from the start, the movie throws too much into the blender and ends up both overstuffed and underdeveloped.

We get another villain in the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott, absolutely rocking a turtleneck-and-shades combo), a potential love interest in Calypso (Ariana DeBose, lumbered with the worst lines of dialogue in a packed field) and also, for good measure, a villain tease for a sequel that'll never happen.

There is obvious stitching in the edit, including several cuts-to-black and multiple uses of ADR when, conveniently, the characters are framed in a wide shot so you can't see their mouths. If it was aimed at making it feel like a cohesive whole, it hasn't worked and some judicious cutting might have worked better.

Kraven the Hunter's opening prison assassination is a decent tone-setter with some sharp, gory action. It tells you what you need to know about Kraven, but the movie then decides to shift to an extended, dull flashback that halts all momentum.

This flashback does at least give us the most of 'Russell Crowe doing an accent', so there's that at least. Crowe seems to be enjoying himself, dropping a random 'the' or 'a' every now and then to show he's Russian (whether in script or a choice, we don't know).

You can see how, if it decided to shun all origin-story stuff, Kraven the Hunter might have at least been entertaining as just a father-son tale. Say what you want about the Venom trilogy, but it knew what it wanted to be and who its specific audience was. Here, it's hard to tell who will be satisfied, as even the movie doesn't know what it is.

aaron taylor johnson, russell crowe, kraven the hunter — Sony Pictures

Perhaps the biggest miss for Kraven the Hunter is that comic-book fans of the character won't be satisfied either. There's nothing villainous about this iteration and he's barely an anti-hero, unless the only qualification is to kill people. Without Spider-Man, he's almost without a purpose, too.

This Kraven only kills people who deserve it and where some versions of this movie might have introduced some moral quandaries, it's pretty clear that the people Kraven hunts down here are Bad People. Calypso is also nothing like her comic counterpart and seems to be in the movie purely for there to be a female character.

So who, then, is Kraven the Hunter for? SSU completists (like us), sure, and maybe a general audience who prefer their comic-book movies more bloodthirsty. There are some creative, bloody kills here, especially a unique use of two bear traps and a log, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson is as solid as ever when it comes to the action beats.

That might well be enough for some, but ultimately, it's hard not to imagine Kraven the Hunter missing the target completely this Christmas. Come back Venom, all is forgiven.