My Corner

December 2025

Despite arriving in a cinematic landscape oversaturated with super-powered protagonists, quippy multiversal banter, and increasingly self-referential world-building, Kraven the Hunter manages to carve out a distinct place for itself by embracing something many comic book films seem to fear these days: conviction. Director J.C. Chandor, working from a script that occasionally teeters between poetic and pulpy, treats this origin story not as a corporate obligation but as a grim, muscular morality tale about inheritance, instinct, and the violent confusion of becoming one’s father even while trying to kill him.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson delivers a performance that does not attempt to outshine the genre’s flashier icons but instead leans into a quieter, more physically expressive form of storytelling, using his body, breath, and gaze to communicate Kraven’s inner war between humanity and the animalistic force festering beneath his skin. Rather than playing the character with winks or swagger, he imbues Sergei Kravinoff with the heaviness of generational trauma, the brutality of someone shaped by a childhood where love was confused for conquest, and the weary resignation of a man who understands he will never be free of the jungle, no matter how many men he hunts or beasts he conquers.

The film’s greatest strength lies in its refusal to mock its own premise, which, in lesser hands, might have collapsed under the weight of camp or pretension. Chandor directs with a striking seriousness that allows the film’s animalistic themes, violent confrontations, and mythic framing to resonate not as hyperbole but as emotional truth rendered through genre language. Whether in the form of Sergei stalking enemies across rooftops under a blood-orange sky, or in the symbolic interplay between predators and prey within his fractured family dynamic, the director crafts sequences that feel purposeful rather than chaotic, often letting silence and tension dominate where other superhero films would rely on endless sound.

Supporting performances, though occasionally underwritten, carry surprising weight. Russell Crowe, playing Kraven’s father with leonine cruelty and theatrical grandeur, embraces the character’s symbolic function without losing touch with his emotional core, allowing the film’s central generational conflict to land with mythic force rather than mere melodrama. Fred Hechinger, as Sergei’s brother Dmitri, offers a layered and slow-burning turn that gradually emerges as one of the most emotionally precise arcs in the story, while Alessandro Nivola’s Rhino, whose transformation veers into the absurd in later scenes, begins the film as a genuinely menacing figure whose physical dominance masks deeper fragility. Most surprising of all is Christopher Abbott’s Foreigner, a villain executed with quiet, calculated menace, whose lean frame and composed stillness serve as an ideal counterpoint to Sergei’s volatile, instinct-driven ferocity.

Although the film rarely feels overblown, certain elements do suffer from an imbalance of intention and execution, particularly when it comes to the handling of Ariana DeBose’s Calypso, a character who feels designed to evoke mystery and mysticism but who is ultimately given too little to do beyond embodying symbolic power. Her presence is striking, and DeBose plays her with dignity and restraint, yet the script hesitates to grant her the agency or complexity she clearly deserves. Likewise, some of the digital effects, while largely effective, occasionally falter during high-speed action sequences or animal-infused transformations, offering brief reminders that this is still a mid-budget studio entry rather than a fully unleashed creative vision.

Even so, Kraven the Hunter works more often than it stumbles, in large part because its creators understand the tone they are aiming for and never betray that vision in pursuit of cheap irony or audience reassurance. The story, grim and primal, unfolds with a deliberate sense of rhythm, allowing themes of violence, power, legacy, and personal code to emerge without being spoon-fed to the audience. While the film contains its fair share of brutal encounters, including a memorably grotesque moment involving a bitten-off nose, the violence never feels indulgent for its own sake, instead serving as a natural extension of the world Kraven inhabits and the trauma he carries.

Rather than attempting to align itself with larger cinematic universes or over-promising future crossover events, the film commits to telling one contained and emotionally sincere story about a man wrestling with his nature, which may ultimately be the most subversive thing a comic book movie can do in 2024. Though not without its flaws, Kraven the Hunter is a strange, intense, often beautiful film that succeeds not by being louder or bigger than its competitors but by being more focused, more grounded, and more willing to bleed.