So…to be honest, I actually did enjoy this movie. I was looking forward to seeing it after watching the trailer. I like superhero movies anyway, but the trailer made this movie look more dark…and that definitely piqued my interest.
The opening scene set up the rest of the movie nicely, though there wasn’t a lot to make it stand out too much from other superhero movies. Cassie’s mother died in childbirth and her father wasn’t really mentioned at all, so she grew up in the foster system. This obviously had a negative impact on her, as she seems to have trouble relating to people as an adult, even going so far as to react very awkwardly when she’s thanked for saving a woman’s life and the woman’s son gives her a drawing he made.
I will say that I found Cassie to be an extremely relateable character in this movie. She had a cat come into her apartment who she fed and that made me like her a lot, being a cat person myself. I also really liked the way it was handled when she started seeing visions of the future. Her confusion was obvious and I thought the visions were integrated really well.
I also felt that Cassie’s previous interactions with the three teenagers she ends up saving were really seamless; with the possible exception of Mattie, whose original appearance had her flipping Cassie off while she was driving an ambulance. As Cassie put it, ‘Who flips off an ambulance?!’
I will say that the weakest part of this movie was, in my opinion, the villain. Ezekial didn’t really have much depth to him…and apart from trying to stop his own death in the future, I was really unclear about what his motives were in the present. Apart from gaining the powers of the spider, what exactly was his end goal? I could get behind a villain wanting to kill those destined to kill him before they were able to do so, but he lacked a lot of depth…and depth is one of those things that makes a villain so much more interesting.
I did enjoy the interactions that were shown between Cassie and the three teenagers, especially with Cassie saving them…and then wanting to make them their parents’ responsibility straight away. It was another aspect of Cassie that I felt I could relate to: not wanting to suddenly be responsible for three teenagers.
On the whole, I personally really enjoyed this movie. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was fun and I liked the relationship between Cassie, Julia, Anya and Mattie. And while the villain didn’t have much depth to him, the danger the characters were in felt real…and there were some darker moments involving the visions that I felt worked really well.
I would probably watch this movie again, as I felt it was quite good for what it was, even if it was far from perfect.