Madame Web, the new Sony film about the titular Marvel comics character starring 50 Shades of Grey’s Dakota Johnson, just released on Valentine’s Day. As if Johnson’s press tour (where it seemed very clear that she does not like the movie) wasn’t enough, the reviews are pouring in—and according to them, the film is not good. It’s like, Morbius-level bad. In fact, Madame Web sounds so bad that I wonder if Sony didn’t release it hoping it would garner a similar, cult-like craze that spawns countless memes and even prompts an eventual re-release. We’ll probably never know, but what we do know is that the internet’s reaction to the film (which also stars Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney and The Last of Us season two’s Isabela Merced) is already the stuff of legend.
Naturally, social media is ensnared in Madame Web’s, um, web, as Letterboxd, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) are all popping off with hilariously biting reviews and reactions. I have not seen this movie, but I now know that there are an egregiously large amount of editing cuts, stunted dialogue, and unsynced ADR (automated dialogue replacement) that is distractingly bad. The phenomenal power of social media, am I right?
“Least insane Madame Web line readings compilation,” shared the Posters with Letterboxd Reviews X account along with a video showing just that.
As usual, Letterboxd provided the best fodder for bad movie laughs. “I was at the dentist today for an hour and a half with Imagine Dragons playing in the background the whole time and I can’t believe that wasn’t the most painful experience I had today,” says user adambolt. “This makes Morbius look like The Godfather,” proclaims Tyler. “The editing in this is enough to kill a small Victorian child,” writes Zoë Rose Bryant. “I kept expecting Nathan Fielder to pop out and reveal his most elaborate social experiment to date,” reads another review from Kit Lazer.
“Every line reading feels like it’s on a Zoom delay,” declared David Sims.
CinemaJoe, a popular TikTok reviewer, wrote such a scathing, sidesplitting review on there that I spewed cold brew all over my laptop while reading it:
Madame Web feels like it was made by aliens from another planet, mostly because it doesn’t seem like a human could watch this slop and agree to release it for public consumption.
A sponsored by Pepsi script written with a crayon where every line is either ADR or expository babble and it can’t even bury the script under action or style, because there is none. Lifeless, nonsensical, awkward—but the most I’ve laughed during a movie in a long time, so it’s has that going for it.
Scientists (not in the Amazon) will study this movie for years, but I doubt Sony will learn a lesson from it.
“Does anyone else think Dakota Johnson does not know how to open a can of soda after seeing Madame Web?” asks a redditor in the /AMCsAlist subreddit. In the same subreddit, another user proclaims that “Madame Web is camp.”
Welp, you’ve convinced me. Guess I’m seeing Madame Web this weekend.
