Venom: Let There Be Carnage - Movie Review

What do you get when you make a sequel to a superhero film that massively overachieved despite a weak script and a stereotypical plot?

A really crummy film.

Surprised?

Let’s discuss.

Venom is an action / horror / comedy / superhero films brought to us by directed Andy Serkis and writer / star Tom Hardy and Kelly Marcel.

Wait, the story was written by the lead actor?

How’d that turn out?

About as good as you’d imagine.

Tom Hardy is an amazing actor and he seems like a good guy in real life, but he’s not a writer. The projects he’s been a part of where he’s been in charge have been minor disasters. Taboo on FX was blink and you’ll miss it and Venom: Let There Be Carnage is equally as futile. It’s obvious that even though Hardy comes from my generation, he lacks the actual fandom on the Venom character and/or lacks any knowledge of the Maximum Carnage storyline.

How do I know this?

Let me breakdown the character of Carnage, starting with his host. Cletus Kasady is a deranged serial killer who had committed multiple murders before the age of ten including the brutal killing of his grandmother. Cletus is one of the villains so evil he is shown killing puppies. In the Maximum Carnage comic run, he’s in prison for life due to multiple torture / murders of men, women, and children. Eddie Brock, being imprisoned after his first attempts to kill Spider-Man is hit cellmate. Eddie hates Cletus because all Cletus does is talk about his murders and get aroused. Hence, Eddie beats the hell out of him on the daily. Unfortunately, when Venom breaks Eddie out of prison, he inadvertently spawns an offspring that bonds with Cletus Kasady completely. Thus, Cletus Kasady becomes the most powerful symbiotic in the Marvel universe, because he is bonded heart and soul with the violent essence of Carnage. He has no friends, no loved ones. The only thing he loves is bloodshed.

Enter Venom: Let There Be Carnage where the story tries to humanize Kasady, by giving him a childhood girlfriend. Not only that, they frame Kasady’s grandmother and mother as child molestors to justify him brutally murdering them. They leave out the fact that he killed so many neighborhood pets that the town stopped having pets completely. They leave out that he’s a child murderer and cannibal. They fail to mention that he’s a sexual deviant. Instead, he’s just the victim and his brutal murder of everyone he sees is supposedly a symptom of not being loved enough. It’s a terrible take on a character that was originally created by David Michelinie to be an unforgivable monster.

Carnage’s original appearance is a taught serial killer thriller. Spider-man and Venom are caught completely unaware as Carnage begins to target their loved ones. The have to scramble to stop the monster before he eliminates everything they care about.

In this film, Kasady is mad because Eddie Brock and Venom figured out where he buried some of his victims and he’s sad because he won’t get to see his girlfriend again before he’s put to death. Queue the Carnage symbiote and a jail break. Queue Woody Harrelson’s worst performance in a decade as he reprises his role of Mickey Knox from Natural Born Killers. Well, it’s not such much a reprisal of Oliver Stone’s take on Charles Starkweather, but instead a lampoon of the groundbreaking role. Harrelson is a caricature of his old role. He’s dressed in a costume obviously inspired by his star making performance, but it lacks any of the energy. Harrelson drags the movie down with Bruce Willis level of enthusiasm.

It doesn’t help that his sidekick, the normally fantastic Naomie Harris, is burdened with an uneven character arc that adds nothing to the film other than frustration. They tried to make her much like Juliette Lewis’ Mallory Knox from NBK, but again fail as she has no heart. She begins as a sympathetic character, but then turns totally evil and unrepentant. It’s a jarring transition that removes any chance of her having an impact on the film, especially as she’s supposed to be the classic Venom villain Shriek.

Honestly, this movie has a lot of Spider-Man 3’s issues. It’s overloaded with characters, comedy, and lacks direction. This is a bloated mess that fails to satisfy the layman or the spider-man fan.

Michelle Williams is fantastic as is Tom Hardy, but there’s nothing going on. Half of this movie is a slapstick comedy with no super hero action. You have to get an hour in before Venom actually becomes Venom, and even then there’s no action, just more comedy.

This is the Jerry Lewis of Superhero films.

There’s no Spoilers for this one guys, gals, and everyone in between. There is literally nothing to spoil as the majority of the third act of the film was in the trailers. I’m no hyperbolizing, literally the entire climax of the film is in the trailers as those are the only action scenes they had to use.

If you need a fun popcorn movie for some twelve year olds, pop in Venom: Let There be Carnage.

I rented the film on VUDU… on sale…