Review: Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Venom: Let There Be Carnage, directed by Andy Serkis, tells the tale of Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), a journalist trying to jumpstart his career again after going through a messy breakup with his girlfriend (Michelle Williams) and getting possessed by a freaky alien parasite named Venom that takes control of Brock’s body and do some freaky superhero things. After saving the world Brock attempts to get back into the journaling business by interviewing a serial killer named Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson). But after getting into a kerscuffle with Brock, Kasady manages to get some of that Venom symbiote in his system and develops his own freaky alien parasite named Carnage. Now Brock must set aside his differences with Venom and stop Carnage before he can induce some more…carnage.

So here’s an apparently unpopular opinion: I didn’t like the first Venom movie. I thought it was something of a mess with its uneven tone, crap writing, and an over-reliance of some dated-looking CGI. I went into this movie hoping to have a somewhat better experience because I do enjoy the character Carnage from the Spider-Man comics, but to arguably no surprise I hated this movie just as much as the last movie, if not more.

Everything about this movie is almost exactly the same as the first movie, only this time it has Carnage as the main villain instead of some generic discount Elon Musk bad guy. Whenever Carnage appears on screen the film gets significantly more fun; he’s basically the same blood-crazed monster you know and love from the comics and despite the PG-13 rating (yeah I’ll get to more of that in a bit) his action sequences are still fun to watch. The comedy in the film is slightly better this time around; there’s a great scene where Venom goes to a gay rave and “comes out of the closet” and it’s about as ridiculous and hilarious as it sounds. And that’s about all I liked about this film.

Perhaps my worst gripe about this film is the god awful editing. Dear god the edits in this film astound me; scenes are chopped up to oblivion, the pacing is ludacrisly fast, and continuity is shot to hell. This is one of those rare instances where a longer runtime might’ve benefited the film more; for a ninety minute feature it felt WAY too short. The characters are just as uninteresting as they were in the first film, performances range from dull to Tom Hardy levels of ham, and the CGI is slightly improved but still sticks out like a sore thumb.

And then there’s the film’s PG-13 rating. This film clearly wants to go all out with the violence, but the filmmakers are too scared to commit to it; they still want to keep things “kid friendly” just in case they do decide to cross Tom Hardy’s Venom over to the MCU. As a result all the violence especially from Carnage feel cheap and comical at times in the way they actively censor some of the more brutal parts. When Carnage or Venom bite heads off, the film either cuts away or does everything to obscure the action. It’s like that for the entire movie.

Overall this movie is like a turd in the wind. I actively tried to have fun watching this movie, but it’s just too much of a poorly paced, poorly edited mess for me to give a damn. If I wanted to watch balls-off-the-wall superhero action, I’d watch something like Deadpool, a superhero movie that’s fun, hilarious, incredibly self aware, just like what this movie’s trying to accomplish with the only difference being Deadpool actually tried to be a good movie, not like this waste of my time. People who loved the first film will enjoy this film just fine, but if you didn’t like the first film you won’t like this one. I tried to like it guys, but I’m sorry; this movie just sucks.

Final Verdict: 2/10