I just saw the latest Sony film, Madame Web. And I'm still deciding how I feel about it. 

Madame Web is the story of Cassandra ("Cassie") Webb, a young paramedic who discovers her clairvoyant abilities after a near-death (drowning) experience. She grapples with her newfound ability, much to the concern of her friends, while trying to protect three teenage girls from a villain who is convinced that they will be the cause of his untimely demise. Webb is played by Dakota Johnson, best know for her role as Ana in the infamous Fifty Shades of Grey film series, and also features rising star Sydney Sweeney as Julia Cornwall.

Dakota Johnson's performance in this film is underwhelming at best. Her character is supposed to be a cool, slightly reckless but ultimately responsible woman, but the only person I see Dakota portray is... Dakota. I never really feel her passion in delivery, and the majority of her character's decisions are impossibly stupid. Leaving three teenage girls alone in the woods? Really? The main villain was extremely forgettable, having essentially three lines, which I'll tell you later. 

The standout performance came from Celeste O'Connor, who perfectly conveyed the slightly obnoxious (but secretly quite caring) Mattie Franklin. She provides comic relief- although the timing can be off (but we'll talk about the dialogue)- and is strangely endearing. 

The camera work in this film is decent, but it's nothing to write home about. The car chase scenes (are filmed quite nicely, but the flashback footage has so many flashes and flickers one feels a sense of vertigo while watching. I've seen discourse online suggesting this was just a cheap way to reuse footage to lengthen the run time of the film; while I don't think this is true, it does occasionally seem like a lazy time-wasting tactic. The most atrocious thing, however, was that during editing, most of Ezekiel's (the villain!) audio was cut, leading him to have to re-record some lines of dialogue. Instead of re-filming the problematic scenes, these awkward voice-overs were spliced into the footage, causing a mismatch between Tahar Rahim's mouth and some dialogue.

And oh, the dialogue. 

"These girls are going to kill me in 10 years", "Who is this woman helping them escape me?" and to his polymath/hacker assistant, "Work harder or I'll kill you, [to his hacker assistant]"- or some variation of those- are really the only lines Ezekiel says in the entire film.

One of the screenwriters of this project also worked on Morbius, which is easily Sony's most reviled films to date. The top 5 classic lines include:

• "When you take on the responsibility, great power will come." A reworking of the iconic Spider-Man line? Presumably. It doesn't really land, though.

• "They're teenagers now, but in the future..." (from Ezekiel. See what I was talking about?)

• "When your heart starts back up again... you're fine" (said by a paramedic 24 hours after her near-drowning experience)

• "The girls were never your future. I was." (said by Cassie Webb to Ezekiel, despite Ezekiel having seen the girls killing him in his own visions over several years.)

• "You know the best thing about the future? It hasn't happened yet." The final line of the film. Easily the cheesiest one I've heard in a while.

I won't tell you any more of the horrible dialogue, but it will remain a shock to me how certain aspects of the script were greenlit right until the end.

The thing is, despite the underwhelming performances and overall lacklustre and cheesy nature of the movie, I can't quite bring myself to hate it. There's genuinely no explanation, but I find that, unlike certain other superhero movies (Black Adam...) I don't think Madame Web was a waste of two hours of my life.

Madame Web is merely the latest in a slew of half-baked comic book films from the MCU, and with its slapdash feel, obvious message of taking action for your vague future and its anachronistic music references (Toxic? By Britney Spears? In 2003? Really?), there's no denying you will not be observing any directorial excellence (S.J. Clarkson) or genius screenwriting (Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Clarkson and Kerem Sanga). It isn't great.

Would I RECOMMEND it? Only under the condition that one is really bored and doesn't care where they go, or about the quality of the film. And that is more than I can say for Morbius. If we're measuring with that, though, maybe the situation is worse than we thought.