Kraven The Hunter can hunt anything down except a notable moment in his movie. Whether it's hunting for emotional moments, great CGI, or a decent plot, Kraven misses the mark. The only thing it did ensnare was disparaging laughs from the people around me in the cinema. The movie is laughably bad in all aspects. I left the theater thinking I just wasted a good Friday night and now I have to remember everything I just watched for this review. This isn't even a review at this point it is an exorcism to purge the memory of such a bland, tepid movie.

Now, “bland and tepid” should never be associated with hunters. A hunter is supposed to be proactive, a step ahead of their prey but this Kraven the Hunter is never a step ahead. There is not a single moment in the movie where he is driving the plot forward. Everything that happens in the movie is the result of some outside influence that he then has to respond to. His powers? Given to him by a random girl who gives him her family's secret potion while he's dying from a lion mauling. Moving to Russia? His mother’s death spurs his father to move him from his fancy New York prep school to Russia for I guess…becoming stronger? (The reason for this move is never fully explained) This trend of the (nonsensical) plot happening and Kraven just being left to react to it gets old REALLY FAST. Just to make it worse those two instances I mentioned are flashbacks. These moments and more throughout the film, made me feel like Kraven was a side character in his movie. Which for a guy named The Hunter is a real damn shame.

Kraven the Hunter is filled with needless characters that are somehow still more important than its main character. From Kraven's father, Nicolai, and brother Dmitri to Calypso, The Futurist, Rhino, and so on. Each one pops up at various points in the plot and feels ineffective. None stick around long enough for the audience to connect with, and each aren’t characterized well enough for us to know anything about them. All Kraven offers as our main character is Aaron Taylor Johnson's abs and some gore. Dmitri, whose lip sync performances got the most disparaging laughs, is supposed to be our emotional pull and falls flat because he has no defining characteristics to make us like him. He's not funny, charming, or smart, and although they try and make you think he's singing we know that's not his voice. Calypso, who gives Kraven his powers with her family's potion, is just there to be there. The Futurist is just there to do his super move which is him counting to three like the Count from Sesame Street and teleporting (I think it's not explained very well). Rhino’s appearance in this film is strange and his reasoning for becoming a villain is due to an insult he receives from Nicolai once while hunting. Did he expect a mob boss who enjoys killing wild animals to be spreading positivity like Bob Ross? Nicolai, played by Russel Crowe, becomes the most necessary character because nearly all the plot events center around him which would be cool if he didn't have to share so much screen time with other C-list characters.

If you thought the characters couldn’t get worse then just wait until you see them interact with each other. This movie is filled with some of the most displeasing dialogue I've ever heard. Much of it contradicts or negates itself and others are straight cringey. In one instance of contradictions, a young Kraven gets grilled on a ship before a moment when he runs away. His grilling ends when he says "Are you running away" and Kraven says "Yes, I am" and he just lets him on what seems like a commercial ship. I just sat there wondering why he even bothered to grill him. He doesn't even ask for money or something valuable he just allows him to escape with no questions asked. Then there's just straight-up cringe. The type of cringe that makes you wonder if this whole movie is a humiliation ritual. Calypso finds Kraven's bow in his very well-put-together residence in the jungle. She picks it up and looks down its sights for Kraven to say "Be careful with that", she responds with "I'm very good with these, summer camp." It's the type of dialogue that would put Disney Channel movies to shame. The only piece of dialogue that is decently memorable is Nicolai saying, "Man who kills legend, becomes legend." It's not great and Russel Crowe's Russian accent is far from authentic. The dialogue tries too hard to be memorable, impactful, or witty at moments. Scenes go from characters struggling to converse to a one-liner fest by bad stand-up comedians.

Now, not everything in Kraven is bad. The action is passable. There isn't a super memorable action sequence but for the most part, the scenes where Kraven does some hunting are okay. There is just so much that is done wrong it doesn't matter what's done right. One scene has Kraven sneak up behind a goon, basically breathing on his neck, for a few stories just for the guy not to notice. Instances like this distilled the tension of the action because if these guys don't have the wherewithal to spot a man basically kissing their neck I doubt they could beat him in a fight. I watched every fight scene never feeling like Kraven was in any real danger. I know his name is on the title of the movie so he's going to live but at least give me a small feeling that he could die. This lack of tension coupled with the bad CGI makes the action scenes a real pain to watch. Kraven jumps out of buildings and turns into a PNG halfway into his jump. The green screen jungle background was giving Hallmark but with a (small) budget increase.

There is a lot more I could harp on. Whether it's the weird editing that saw Kraven carve a salmon he just caught into a perfectly peeled salmon cube or the fact that they had African cape buffaloes in the Siberian jungle, I really could keep going. Kraven doesn't do the one thing a hunter must do and that is earn its prize. It wants to have a great story, a great ensemble of characters, iconic dialogue, and awesome fight scenes but they are nowhere to be found. The movie expects you to just fall in love with Kraven because he's on the movie poster alone. As I’ve said, I really could write academic essays about all the things it does wrong, but Kraven already hunted (haunted) me one night and I will not let it get another.