Venom: Let There Be Carnage

The Cineworld screening for Venom: Let There Be Carnage on a Monday evening was nigh-on full. Is this a positive thing? A sign that the superhero genre is losing none of its stranglehold on audiences and that those audiences are happy to embrace the comfort and joy of the cinema after the misery of Covid? Or should it be taken as a sign that, like queues at fuel stations, the British public can’t be trusted?

A difficult quandary but it’s right to focus on the joy of seeing a cinema full of people. It’s just a shame that they were sat in front of what, whichever way you slice it, is another frustratingly poor film.

The first Venom felt like a cynical attempt by Sony to do something, anything, with what they had of the Spider-Man license after finally allowing him to appear in the MCU. What should have been an off-kilter, 18-rated, Joker/Deadpool-esque success of horror and comedy was awfully old-fashioned, lazy and just plain poor in a genre that has moved on to put it mildly. As we should have all expected in hindsight, audiences lapped it up.

The second? It’s exactly the same. Much like DC’s disappointing Birds Of Prey, Sony couldn’t resist resorting to type when they had a chance to push the boat out. The audience was there, the character and actor (in fact, the whole cast) was there yet they just had to make another formulaic, by the numbers, predictable, audience-baiting, late 90’s insult to the superhero genre as we now know it.

Ok, it improves on the original. The comedy needle is pushed all the way up and, whilst quite a lot is painfully unfunny, Tom Hardy is capable of making a lot of the humour land (although the overblown effects on his Venom voice are entirely unnecessary and kill a lot of the jokes stone dead.) This suits the tone and the character though, and the supposedly ‘anti-heroic’ theme.

We also have a leaner story (only just breaking the 90 minute mark) with a more clearly-defined villain and more time to spend with Hardy and his symbiotic friend. Hardy is too good to not be anything other than eminently watchable so this scores points, especially when Woody Harrelson is equally good and being purely villainous, regardless of the typical lack of motivation.

But that’s all there is to say really. Once again, every action scene is a blurry mess of incomprehensible CGI, despite having the motion capture master Andy Serkis behind the camera, and the whole thing just leaves a horribly sour taste in the mouth with the exception of a very intriguing mid-credits scene (do not leave those seats!)

It’s a great cast, great character and solid idea again squandered by a studio without the cojones to take a risk despite the audience being virtually guaranteed. We shouldn’t allow this to slide, spend that money elsewhere.

2 stars **