• Release year: 2024
• Director: J. C. Chandor.
• Producers: Avi Arad, Danielle Halferty, David B. Householter, Jackson Kerr, Matt Tolmach.
• Screenplay by: Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway.
• Cinematography by: Ben Davis.
• Music by: Evgueni Galperine, Sacha Galperine, and Benjamin Wallfisch.

Shotgun Commentary: too bad for fans of superhero movies, too boring for fans of bad superhero movies.

Review

Oh, how I wanted to like this movie. Not even love. Liked would have been enough. Yet, Kraven the Hunter is not even funny enough to be a good time, it’s just bad and stale. I can’t believe I’m saying this about a film created around a cunning, mostly half-naked, murder machine, but YAWN.

This happens… because.

Let’s begin with some context. Kraven’s real name is Sergei Kravinoff, he’s the son of a drug dealer of some sorts, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe). Now, drug dealer is a very loose term. The film implies that he deals with every illegal thing you can think of. However, there is one explicit mention of this, so let’s stick to that for now.

Sergei gets mauled by a lion, but a girl is given an elixir of life of sorts. Small digression here: the repetition of “of sorts” is very much on purpose. The film is so vague and generic that nothing is ever actually justified or explained. Back to the movie, she makes him drink it, saving his life and giving him enhanced abilities. When he recovers, he decides to make the world a better place by killing poachers. That evolves into killing anyone evil except, conveniently, his father.

Simply put, the story tries to bite off more than it can chew. There are four different storylines going on at once, and none of them get enough screen time to be properly developed. The lack of depth and complexity in all the narratives and dialogues will make you sleepy and bored. No matter how much blood is being splattered around.

This could have actually been a pretty good film, or at least entertaining and fun, had someone cut off at least half an hour of footage. Let’s elaborate on that.

The unexplainable

Attention, this paragraph contains MINOR SPOILERS. Why do they bother with so many out-of-nowhere scenes of a guy killing extras, if he is completely insubstantial to the story and dies the minute he gets more than three sentences on screen? Why is the lawyer there at all? What is her role in the story other than none at all? She feels like Indiana Jones in the first instalment (The Raiders of the Lost Arc, 1981). So there’s at least two storylines that could’ve been eliminated, or at least shortened to the very basics.

There are plenty of reviews that mention the shabby CGI effects. This won’t be another one. Furthermore, this writer is all up for horrible CGI as long as the story is either good, or bad enough to be fun. Sadly, this is just bad. In fact, one’s only hope is that the cast was paid enough for this, specially Russel Crowe. He better have had the time of his life, cause this is one of his worst roles ever. Now, let there be no misunderstanding, Crowe is wonderful, but there is only so much you can do with a one-dimensional crime lord that merely represents American’s prejudiced ideas of what Russians act like.

Bad and worse

As for the main character, Kraven, he is played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. A man who, despite embedding his character with as much charm as humanly possible to his character, is incapable of making us forget how tediously nonsensical everything about him is. From the awkward one-liners, to the over-explanations, to his allergy to wearing a T-shirt, this character would work magnificently had this feature been promoted as a parody for superhero films. Sadly, it is not, so you are stuck following a bunch of abs with the personality depth of a two-year-old.

There are a lot of negative things to say about all the supporting characters. From the female character whose personality is reduced to “She’s just sort of there”, to the cringy man who turns into a rhino gym-bro allergic to leg day, to the mysterious-but-not-really evil sidekick who is competing with the only woman on screen for the title of “most irrelevant character”. The list of reasons why their existence is nothing but proof of the incompetence of the writers could go on for a while, but they have made this writer waste enough of her time already.

All in all, Kraven the Hunter is the type of film you just can’t justify. Even as a fan of pointless nudity and gratuitous violence, the absolute lack of depth in every aspect of the film manage to ruin the experience. An experience that, mind you, could’ve been salvaged has they leaned onto the lack of substance rather than adding more storylines as a pitiful diversion attempt.

Regrettably, I can’t recommend this to anyone, not even to those of you who go crazy for a terrible film, maybe if you just watch the beginning and then take a nap…

Advice to take from this movie:

• Aren’t vests supposed to go OVER T-shirts?
• If you promote a film about how villains are made, is it too much to ask that actually… make a villain?
• Rhinos DO NOT make THOSE cringy sounds. If you’ve watched the film, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
• Can somebody tell Fred Hechinger that one cringy role a year is more than enough?

What’s your take? Have you watched Kraven the Hunter? Don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave a message in my contact page! For more reviews and cinema-related articles, check out the rest of my blog! 😀