Kraven the Hunter (2024)

Kraven the Hunter arrives as the sixth entry in a shared universe that has spent years insisting on its own existence, and it carries itself with the grim determination of a man who has read the room and decided to ignore it. The premise concerns Sergei Kravinoff, a hunter who has renounced poaching, runs an animal sanctuary, and calls himself a protector of the natural world. That is the closest the film comes to a thesis, and it is a mild one. A lion is spared, a buffalo stampede is deployed as a weapon, and we are invited to admire a man who kills people but respects fauna. Environmental awareness, yes, of a sort that fits comfortably on a tote bag. No crisis messaging intrudes.

The cast is more diverse than the genre typically bothers with, and the film never mentions it, which is its own quiet achievement. Ariana DeBose plays Calypso as a lawyer and voodoo priestess who heals the hero, kills an assassin with a crossbow, and revives the lead, all while remaining a supporting device in a story about a man and his father. There is agency here and no argument behind it. The villain traffics drugs, which the screenplay treats as ordinary villainy, not a verdict on capital. No queer characters appear. No body-positive themes. No neurodivergent ones. The film has other things on its mind, mostly knives.

The sermonizing that exists concerns hunting ethics and the hero's sense of moral superiority, which his brother punctures in the final scene with some satisfaction. It is a light dusting of philosophy over a great deal of violence. The film is not preachy. It is not much of anything, really, beyond a sturdy R-rated exercise in men hitting each other in picturesque locations. We classify it accordingly, with the weary precision the work demands.