Venom
Movie review score
2/5
What’s it about?
Reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is infected by an alien parasite that gives him superpowers, but shares control of his body.
What Did We Think?
Peter Linning says: Desperately hoping that you’ll assume it’s part of Marvel’s cinematic universe (look, we have a Stan Lee cameo and everything!) Venom is occasionally fun, but not nearly enough to warrant your time. The movie’s best moments are the interactions between Tom Hardy’s Eddie and the “symbiote”, as he discovers the nature of their shared living situation. Sadly these scenes are few and far between, buried in a poorly-written and awkwardly paced mess.
Not as Quick Review: A handful of the comedic scenes land well, but there’s far more that don’t, and just as many that weren’t intentional.
The occasional moments where Tom Hardy turns it on made me want to enjoy the movie, but the distractingly poor editing and direction cause it to be worse than the sum of its already weak parts.
The plot is incredibly thin, even by the forgiving standards of the super-genre. The supporting cast of Michelle Williams as Love Interest and Riz Ahmed as Science Villain can’t do much with the lines they’re given, and no-one really seems to be trying terribly hard.
The sanitised, bloodless action scenes fail to capitalise on the character’s inherent lethality (gotta get that soft M rating!).
Despite all of these weaknesses, Venom could have passed for just a below-average superhero genre film if the movie had struck a more consistently mediocre tone. Instead, the jarring edits and bizarre pacing of the movie’s weak moments (which is most of the running time) don’t let you tune them out, and you’re forced to pay attention to the mess.
It’s somehow apt that a story about an alien symbiotic struggle for a body has become a movie that struggles with self-identity. Initially promoted as Sony’s first R-rated movie, this PG13 release doesn’t quite appear to know what it is and what it wants to do. It’s neither a hero or anti-hero film, neither serious or comedy, and quite schizophrenic even in delivery. It tries to use the two MCU traits I least like (unnecessary humour and SPOILER fighting a version of the protagonist) but that only serves to further emphasise the movie’s failings. Impressive acting is overshadowed by strange direction (Eddie Brock seems to get stupider the longer the movie goes) and a boring , clichéd bad guy.
Toning down the head-biting and adult themes to attract more kids just means us grown-ups won’t be seeing this a second time. It’s ok, but only barely.