Kraven the Hunter

There are two moments in director JC Chandor's Kraven the Hunter where it seems like the filmmakers might be on to something. The first arrives during a lengthy car chase in which Aaron Taylor-Johnson's oligarch offspring gives chase, on foot, pursuing a vehicle containing his kidnapped kid brother. Unable to batter his way through the bulletproof glass that encases his quarry, Kraven - who enjoys superhuman strength thanks to a run-in with a supernatural lion who bled into the wounds it scored into his body as well as a mystical concoction that completely re-worked his DNA - sinks his fingers into the weatherproof seal that surrounds the car door and begins pulling. Now, Kraven doesn't quite manage to gain entry at this point in the proceedings but this application of his animalistic super-strength to something other than a badly puppeteered, computer generated figure is momentarily appealing. 

The film's other highlight is even briefer but no less concerned with the meeting between the human body and an object that appears either unmoving or outright impervious. It occurs during the third-act when Kraven finds himself the subject in a hunt on his home turf: a big game sanctuary that contains the pre-fab igloo where Kraven stores his various knives. Unfortunately for the anonymous goon catapulted towards a knot of roots and blades, after stumbling upon a trip-wire trap, this intersection is not one predicated on an invulnerable flesh. The heavy folds inwards then apart, utterly pulverised by the incredible amount of overkill that has been deployed to neutralise the threat he, previously, represented. And that's it. Everything else about this Spider-Man spin-off is flat and rote, the film completely unwilling to engage with the suicidal superiority displayed by the source character in his most celebrated tale or the strange self-regard that Taylor-Johnson relentlessly broadcasts. This Kraven the Hunter doesn't even have the common decency to pummel its audience into submission with a dance-rock soundtrack.