Venom rocked theatres in 2018 with a dark comedy featuring a disturbed Tom Hardy as he battled with an alien being that was attempting to wrestle control away from him. The film was unique and enjoyable in many ways with the odd dynamic explored and a fresh take on an anti-hero fan favourite.
The sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage falls flat on its face as it attempts to recapture the fun from the original with what feels like a poorly cobbled together story, frustrating pacing and a villain that doesn’t appear to have any story until the last 20 minutes of the film.
The Good
Despite a story that really wasn’t written for the audience, fans or really anyone, the acting from Tom Hardy is engaging. Most of his performance has to be performed with other actors whilst also being badgered by his symbiote frenemy, Venom.
The scenes where he isn’t interacting with other actors, he needs to respond to and interact with a talking head that they insert in post and his ability to do this impeccably comes shining through.
Woody Harrelson plays a convincing psychopath and again manages to take poor scripting like “I’ve tasted blood before and that ain’t blood” and elevate it to actually feel like a marginally believable sentence.
The CGI is excellent quality and the brawls between the symbiotes are great to watch, as well as some seamless handovers between Brock and Venom which are very visually impressive.
The Bad
Spoilers Ahead!
As I said before, this film is at worst, difficult to watch and at best, forgettable.
The pacing sees us rush through major establishing shots to develop the story very quickly. Brock and Kasady had no relationship whatsoever in the first film, so everything that we know about their connection has to be built here.
Unfortunately, we are just dropped into scenes where they talk about knowing each other in a classic “tell, don’t show” set of scenes.
We learn that Kasady was a murderer and is on death row, he wants to get a message to his girlfriend and wants to use Eddie Brock, who he knows from before and is aware is currently a struggling journalist to get the story out as far and wide as possible.
In the concluding scenes, Kasady reveals bombshells that reveal reasons for his insanity and tells Brock “I just wanted to be your friend” before having his head bitten off.
Sandwiched between the two points of the movie where an interesting character and dynamic could have been developed, there is constant bickering between Brock and Venom as they have evolved from host and inhabitant to ‘old, married couple’.
Final Thoughts
The most redeeming aspect of this film is the post-credit scene which makes the whole thing appear as more of a long-winded advert for better things to come.
Ultimately, I am glad Sony only has so much input on projects like Spider-Man and I am increasingly nervous to see what comes out of projects like Morbius in the near future. Fingers crossed, they actually put some thought and talent into the pre-production instead of making the film as an afterthought.
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By Ben Gibbons