‘Kraven The Hunter’ Review: The Hunt Is On

Kraven The Hunter is an origin story for the famed Spider-Man villain with a twist. Instead of becoming an animal hunter like he typically would in other interpretations, Sergei Kravinoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) hunts people who put evil into the world such as animal hunters and drug distributors. Read our Kraven The Hunter review.

While I did enjoy the story, the aspect of the film that really stood out to me was the bond between the brothers, Sergei Kravinoff (Levi Miller) and Dmitri Kravinoff (Billy Baratt). This bond stayed strong throughout the entire film even into the time jump where Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Fred Hechinger later portrayed the two.

The film also featured a lot of Spider-Man’s villains such as Rhino (Alessandro Nivola), Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott). When I first heard that Rhino won’t transform until the final act of the film I was disappointed but after seeing the film I can understand the reasoning behind it. The final design and effects for Rhino were very fascinating to me. 

The character I was very excited for was The Foreigner, I don’t read comics so this served as the first introduction of the character for me. While I felt like the character was reduced to a hitman with not much room for a backstory I did enjoy the depiction of his power set. Coupled with the sound effects, The Foreigner was a threatening presence who felt near unstoppable.

On the topic of powers, I found that the scenes where his powers awakened were a bit over the top but aside from that it was cool seeing how primal Sergei became when using his powers. There was also a stealth section that I was really impressed by, that moment felt intense and I really liked how he used the shadows to his advantage. One aspect that the trailers marketed was Sergei’s ability to control animals and while we did see it happen throughout the film, I felt it wasn’t displayed well. Typically the animals would just appear out of nowhere to help, there was no proper indication that he called/controlled them.

With this seemingly being the last film in the Sony Spider-Man Universe, the film does inevitably end on a cliffhanger. I did however come into the film knowing this ahead of time so it wasn’t too much of a disappointment however, I would’ve liked to see how this character would’ve played out in a potential sequel.

While Kraven The Hunter had its downs, the film managed to keep me engaged with its primary theme of family. The characters were interesting enough even though some suffered from a lack of backstory that could’ve helped answer my burning questions.

Kraven the Hunter is directed by J. C. Chandor and stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, Russell Crowe, and more. The film is now screening in theatres worldwide.

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