Madame Web
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: February 14, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
26
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 51 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
13
Negative:
34
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
70
SlateSam AdamsFeb 14, 2024
It’s a travesty, a disaster, a blight on the history of superheroes and cinema itself. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanFeb 14, 2024
Madame Web is no blockbuster, but in its own quiet way, it manages to break down a few barriers. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireFeb 13, 2024
Within these oversaturated times for comic book movies, Madame Web is blissfully breezy in its pacing, which helps make it a more enjoyable watch than some of the super-serious, end-of-the-world fare we often see. Read full review
62
The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeFeb 13, 2024
None of this would work without Johnson, whose gift for side-eye and deadpan line readings grounds what could be a very silly story into one with real human stakes (that do not, thankfully, involve the fate of the entire world). Read full review
60
SlashfilmWitney SeiboldFeb 13, 2024
Madame Web does not provide a crowd-pleasing bombast. This is a pity, as this odd duck makes for a fascinating watch. This may be one of the final films of the superhero renaissance. Enjoy it before it topples over entirely.  Read full review
59
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerFeb 13, 2024
At times, the movie’s pleasingly jumpy visual scheme and nostalgic 2003-era cheese threaten to form an alliance and make Madame Web work in spite of itself. After all, the movie, even or especially in its worst moments, never gets dull (or weirdly smug, like its sibling Venom movies). It also never fully sheds a huckster-y addiction to pivoting, until it’s pretty far afield from what works about either a superhero movie or a loopy woo-woo thriller. Read full review
58
Original-CinThom ErnstFeb 15, 2024
Madame Web is a strange and quickly forgettable entry in the superhero genre. It falls apart entirely in the third reel with an unimpressive final battle and an odd, but not wholly uninteresting, Buñuel-like expose. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 15, 2024
Sadly, Madame Web fails to rise above its pedigree as a lesser superhero movie. It does nothing to convince viewers that there’s value to be found in a story not featuring a marquee comic book character. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 14, 2024
Still, for much of “Madame Web,” even when it turns bad, it’s a pleasure to see Johnson in this kind of movie. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshFeb 13, 2024
Is Madame Web a good movie? No. Is it hilariously delightful? Often. Read full review
50
Vanity FairRichard LawsonFeb 13, 2024
Madame Web is a muted affair—not outright terrible but certainly not good, neither inert nor as meme-worthy as hoped. It’s a strange movie whose tortured existence is the most compelling thing about it. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonFeb 13, 2024
No matter how likeable Cassie and her friends are, they are powerless in the face of a plot that goes through the motions, revealing ‘shocking’ twists about her past and building to an overblown finale. Madame Web argues that no one’s future is written, but it is very easy to see exactly where this film is going. Read full review
50
IGNFrancesca RiveraFeb 13, 2024
Madame Web has the makings of a interesting superhero psychological thriller, but with a script overcrowded with extraneous characters, basic archetypes, and generic dialogue, it fails the talent and the future of its onscreen Spider-Women. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithFeb 15, 2024
Even though it starts out likable, it gets sillier as it goes along and winds up as camp. Read full review
40
EmpireCatherine BrayFeb 14, 2024
Madame Web isn’t much worse than the rest of the SPUMC, give or take, but it’s not really better, either. Its minimal saving grace is that it doesn’t require much familiarity with the wider universe. Read full review
40
CNNBrian LowryFeb 13, 2024
Ultimately, Madame Web might have sounded like an interesting experiment, and it sort of is, but the execution feels less like a fully realized film than an extended prologue for a movie to come. Read full review
40
The Daily BeastNick SchagerFeb 13, 2024
On the basis of Madame Web, however, Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is now completely lifeless—and in no need of resuscitation. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperFeb 14, 2024
Everything about it seems flat and artificial and contrived, from the limp dialogue to the annoying special effects to some surprisingly uninspired performances, given the talent level of the cast. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonFeb 14, 2024
Johnson tries her best, and O’Connor is good for a few laughs, but “Madame Web” is a lost cause. The special effects are confusing and the action scenes are poorly edited. By the time we get a rote explanation of Webb’s powers, it’s too late to care. Read full review
38
The Associated PressLindsey BahrFeb 14, 2024
It’s too bad because there could have been a more fun movie in here — Clarkson imbues it with a distinctly feminine and teenage energy that makes good use of its soundtrack. But it spins itself into a knot trying to justify a silly story instead. Read full review
38
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenFeb 14, 2024
By the end, it’s made glaringly obvious that the people who made Madame Web intended it to be the prelude to sequels featuring the three proto Spider-Women. Spare us. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 13, 2024
It plays like a bland, third-season Marvel series as watched on a 12-year-old TV set playing in the wrong dramatic aspect ratio, which I realize isn’t a real thing. But now it is. Read full review
38
USA TodayBrian TruittFeb 13, 2024
If only a psychic could have warned us about these wretched Spider-Man spinoffs. Read full review
33
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodFeb 13, 2024
Not only is Madame Web a mess of a movie it doesn’t even qualify as a “it’s so bad it’s good” moment of escapist entertainment. It suffers from a much worse fate: it’s utterly forgettable. Read full review
33
IndieWireDavid EhrlichFeb 13, 2024
An inoffensive, almost endearingly lame whiff of a movie that has the misfortune of arriving at a time when the superhero genre has almost returned to pre-MCU levels of popularity, this “Daredevil”-ass disaster is hilariously retrograde for a story about someone who discovers that she can see a few seconds into the future. Read full review
30
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 15, 2024
The only real bummer about Madame Web, the latest installment in the Spider-Man chronicles, isn’t that it’s bad, but that it never achieves memorably terrible status. The story is absurd, the dialogue snort-out-loud risible, the fights uninspired. Even so, there are glimmers of wit and competency. And then there’s its star, Dakota Johnson, who has a fascinating, seemingly natural ability to appear wholly detached from the nonsense swirling around her. Read full review
30
TheWrapLex BriscusoFeb 14, 2024
It’s an interesting enough premise, even if you divorce the film from its comic book origins, but bland direction and awkward dialogue overtake the film and add a sheen of mediocrity to the entire thing. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesFeb 13, 2024
Madame Web is a fender bender – nothing calamitous, just a time suck. An annoyance. A waste. Read full review
30
ColliderLisa LamanFeb 13, 2024
Madame Web wastes a talented cast on a superhero movie shockingly devoid of tangible humanity. Read full review
30
Screen RantMolly FreemanFeb 13, 2024
Madame Web is boring, unimaginative and dated, despite being one of very few superhero movies centering on female superheroes. All in all, Madame Web is a superhero movie you can absolutely skip. Read full review
27
PolygonAusten GoslinFeb 13, 2024
Yet for all the boring set pieces, bad exposition, and faulty universe expansion, Johnson, Sweeney, Merced, and O’Connor still manage to find tiny spaces where their charisma can peek through. Read full review
25
ObserverEmily ZemlerFeb 14, 2024
The film is fine for the first 30 minutes and you almost wonder if it might not be as bad as everyone is imagining. But then it somehow gets worse and worse until you just feel embarrassed for the cast, who probably couldn’t tell you what Madame Web is about if asked. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubManuel BetancourtFeb 13, 2024
The film is often so hurried or so preoccupied with what’s to come that it ignores what’s happening in the moment. Read full review
20
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreFeb 16, 2024
Even Johnson has her limits, and Madame Web, one of Sony’s attempts to build out its own Spider-Verse, blows so far past them that you can practically guess which scenes were shot last based on the degree to which its star has given up. Read full review
20
The TelegraphRobbie CollinFeb 15, 2024
All in all, it’s a new low in a mini-franchise comprised almost entirely of new lows: Venom, Morbius, and now this. Read full review
20
ScreenCrushMatt SingerFeb 15, 2024
After this boring and unsatisfying debut, it doesn’t take clairvoyance to see this franchise has no future. Read full review
20
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyFeb 15, 2024
Madame Web is fiction and has seemingly passed on the opportunity to make itself exciting – instead offering a two-hour prelude to a 30-second trailer for a sequel that will never happen. Read full review
20
Little White LiesHannah StrongFeb 15, 2024
There’s just something gratingly cheap about the affair, from script to cinematography to performances, as if no one involved wanted to be there. Read full review
20
We Got This CoveredCharlotte SimmonsFeb 14, 2024
Madame Web's disastrously-woven pile of flaws exceeds the descriptive limits of not only the English language, but of the very collective of contrived sound itself. Read full review
20
Total FilmKevin HarleyFeb 14, 2024
While the visuals are refreshingly clean and grounded for a modern superhero film, the story is bogged down by exposition and egregious product placement. Read full review
20
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeFeb 14, 2024
For all its gimcrack incoherence, Madame Web – which would be nothing without Johnson’s charm – is a darn sight less pompous and up itself than the overstuffed Disney content. Read full review
20
The GuardianBenjamin LeeFeb 13, 2024
There is nothing gritty or believable about any of it. The film is as dumb and schlocky as the worst of the genre, with lousy network TV effects, uninvolving action and unfunny and inelegant dialogue, its characters drowning in poorly written exposition (even if the much-memed viral line from the trailer is sadly not in the movie itself). Read full review
20
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 13, 2024
Madame Web feels like a cross between an extended soda commercial and a teaser trailer for still more spinoffs. Read full review
12
Slant MagazineJake ColeFeb 14, 2024
Madame Web grinds to a halt as it gets bogged down in scene after scene of characters, both good and bad, standing around explaining their backgrounds, hang-ups, and desires. Read full review
10
The AtlanticDavid SimsFeb 20, 2024
I almost admire the sheer lack of effort on display in the acting, storytelling, and set pieces. To say that Johnson in particular phoned this performance in would be an insult to Alexander Graham Bell. Read full review
10
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeFeb 13, 2024
It is an airless and stilted endeavor driven by a mechanical screenplay (written by Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless and Claire Parker & Clarkson). Its lack of imagination would be astounding if it wasn’t so expected. Read full review
0
ABC NewsPeter TraversFeb 16, 2024
God-awful is too wimpy a word for this superdiva cash grab that sinks Dakota Johnson and cast in what feels like a random batch of half-baked ideas tossed at the screen in the cynical assumption that we’ll buy any lazy hack-work that is Spider-Man adjacent. Resist at all costs. Read full review
0
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiFeb 14, 2024
“The worst superhero movie yet” is a phrase I’ve written so much in the past three years, I should make a keyboard shortcut for it. “Madame Web” is F6. Read full review
0
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 14, 2024
Madame Web is joyless, a “Jonah Hex” level disaster of a comic book movie. Read full review
0
Rolling StoneDavid FearFeb 13, 2024
A genuine Chernobyl-level disaster that seems to get exponentially more radioactive as it goes along, this detour to one of the dustier corners of Marvel’s content farm is a dead-end from start to finish. Read full review
0
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzFeb 13, 2024
Stupendously stupid and never remotely in control of its faculties, the film represents a kind of weaponized incompetence, hostile and assaultive. Read full review
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