Kraven is like the Sony villain version of Father Christmas, he has a list, he doesn’t need to check it twice, he hunts out who is naughty, and it isn’t nice. The film starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the title character in the sixth and final film in the Sony Spider-Man villain universe, which goes out with a laughably bad bang. Johnson plays the Russian Sergei Kravinoff, the son of a gang leader who gains predator-like hunting abilities, living alone in the woods whilst he hunts down a list of immoral people.
To understand where the film is aiming, and how much respect it has for its protagonist it is important to look at how it introduces the character – in this case, it opens with Kraven urinating in the snow, not providing insight, but rather laughing at anyone who intends to take the film seriously. After an elementary action scene that sees Kraven escape prison after killing a mob leader on the inside, the film flashes back to 16 years prior, showing his childhood with Russell Crowe’s hard Russian father figure. A prolonged sequence of 30-plus minutes where Russell teaches his sons to stalk, whilst when one of them tries to escape to a boat, the Captain only lets him on after Sergei says that he is on the run.
Kraven the Hunter is as silly as it gets. It feels for the most part like amateur filmmaking on all levels. The scenes where characters speak Russian looked dubbed, there are laughably terrible lines and paper-thin characters. However, whilst this is not a good time, it is a fun time, especially when laughing at the ridiculous needle drops and tonal whiplash that comes from the film, or the awkward framing that does not look right. It feels as if at one point the film breaks every rule of cinematic framing.
What is clear from the beginning is the film has no idea what it wants to be or who it is for. It is not full of action nor does it have an interesting narrative or character arc. Full of bizarre choices such as a weird zoom where Kraven seems to have Lion-like eyes that can zoom up close to things from a far distance, in a laughably jarring style. Then there is a jazz club with his brother singing Harry Styles’s ‘Sign of the Times’ as if to say this is how low cinema has come in the mid-2020s. The pick of the bunch, however, is the film’s villain, The Rhino, with lines that feel like they are written by Tommy Wiseau, camply acted and feebly weak.
Whilst Kraven the Hunter is one of the worst films in almost every aspect, the one thing it isn’t is boring. Especially in the right move, the film is a riot, laugh out loud in its ridiculous nature.
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