Review: Venom: Let There Be Carnage

 

The Venom movies run counter to just about everything that's made superhero movies such a success over the last decade. Is that why they're also a lot more fun than most superhero movies of the last decade? Let's find out!

For one thing, Venom himself is a murderous supervillain - uh, "lethal protector" - and while he doesn't really get to kill a whole lot of people, he does have an actual direct, on-camera, he just bit that guy's head off body count, which superhero movies have been terrified of since that Superman movie where the internet decided Superman probably killed a bunch of people just off screen.

For another, as Venom memorably said in his first film, Venom is "a loser". And as this film makes clear, so is his human partner Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy). Much of the first third of this movie's plot is meant to be driven by Brock's sharp journalism skills uncovering the truth regarding a whole lot of bodies hidden by serial killer Cleatus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) - only as the film makes clear, Brock is kinda rubbish at journalism and it's only Venom's superhuman powers of observation that are getting him over the line.

So while Brock now has a fancy apartment, he can't win back his ex Anne (Michelle Williams), who is now engaged to Dr Dan (Reid Scott), while the local cops - as personified by Detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham) - have no respect for him, and Venom himself wants to start eating human (rather than chicken) heads. Then Cleatus develops his own version of the symbiote (named Carnage, naturally) and things get nasty.

Running at a tight 90 minutes, this does what it needs to do and gets out. Much of this would be barely watchable at two hours, but with just about every element shaved down to the bone - only the interactions between Venom and Eddie feel a little self-indulgent, and they're the best thing about the film - this ends up as as an entertaining, if probably forgettable, antidote to superhero bloat.

Hardy (who co-wrote the script) is the big draw here and he's clearly having a lot of fun playing a doofus. If it's a vanity project, it's the best kind: he knows what's fun about the concept, he focuses on that, and he does a solid job of sharing that fun with the audience. The end credits scene suggests a slightly deeper interaction with the Marvel universe might be on the cards: just putting him next to the stuffed shirts that populate the current Marvel line-up should be comedy gold.

- Anthony Morris