Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

By: Mike Ward on Thursday, September 30

PG-13 Running Time: 90 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • Despite no one really loving Venom in 2018, there are lots of people anticipating this sequel and expecting to be pretty great.

  • Tom Hardy is such a unique talent as an actor, he just commands attention - and especially when he’s at war with himself and infected with a cynical, witty symbiote commandeering his physical being.

  • There’s a mid-credits teaser that will command lots of attention and there are some genuine laughs along the way which make this much more entertaining than the previous effort.

NO

  • This is barely a movie, in terms of plot. And what is here - a child can predict the outcome.

  • Improved visual effects notwithstanding, Venom: Let There be Carnage sees its fight and action sequences edited so frenetically, the entire endeavor grows exhausting (and it’s barely 80 minutes without credits!)

  • LOUD NOISES! Seriously, why is everyone screaming and shouting through nearly all of this?


OUR REVIEW

After the messy chaos of 2018’s Venom, a superhero origin story that critics despised, audiences tolerated and still somehow grossed over $860 million worldwide, it became apparent that if Tom Hardy was down - a sequel was inevitable. And without getting into the convoluted, nearly unexplainable legal machinations of why Sony gets to use a few Marvel characters and make Marvel movies outside of the Disney-held MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), along comes Venom: Let There be Carnage, a second crack at telling a story about the vicious parasitic entity that lives within Hardy’s character, Eddie Brock, and desperately wants to wreak havoc, eat heads, and consume human brains.

Where the first film, directed by Ruben Fleischer, was a doddering oaf of a creation, Andy Serkis takes the director’s chair and at least has the sense of knowing what kind of movie he wants the sequel to be. Serkis, who has had a notable run in portraying characters created in the Visual Effects room (Gollum, Baloo, Caesar the Ape to name a few…), leans all in on CGI and comedy for this go-’round. A decision which makes this a more entertaining film certainly, but not necessarily all that better of one.

Hardy, who felt like he was working with a completely different script than everyone else in the previous film, is more aligned with the tempo and flow of Serkis’ vision. Although, honestly, there isn’t really much of a story to align to.

As Eddie Brock, Hardy finds his character more a tabloid reporter now, somewhat disheveled, battling with the wants and desires of that parasitic alter-ego who fights for internal control. Through guttural, almost mechanical voiceover, Brock talks to and internally grapples with much of the vitriol of what Venom is spewing. Sometimes we get funny phrases or goofy one-liners, physical humor or sight gags. Hardy’s performance, looking exhausted through the entire film, could seem to be a result of his attempts to do much of the heavy lifting on a one-note script which rushes through a bullet point list of plot developments to try and get to a meaningful, big-time concluding action sequence.

Those other plot points revolve around Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), a teenage murderer left to wither away at a reform school in the mid-1990s. In his teenage years, he meets and falls in love with Francis (Naomie Harris), who possesses the ability to scream blood-curdling volumes and debilitate people’s hearing. Some twenty or so years later, Brock eventually connects with Kasady on a story prior to Kasady’s execution on Death Row. The two share a Silence of the Lambs-style chat in a cell block, which results in Kasady biting Brock and some of Brock’s tainted blood seeping into his bloodstream.

Later, as Kasady is strapped in and awaits his fateful end, his blood mixes with intravenous chemicals and creates a reaction that causes the parasite in Kasady to grow into the blood red symbiote, later known as Carnage.

Carnage wants to destroy Venom. And we got a movie folks!

The whole film basically builds to a Brock/Venom and Kasady/Carnage rumble in and around the streets of San Francisco. Oh sure, Michelle Williams returns as Anne for a few minutes, Brock’s former fiancé who has moved on to someone new. And there’s something of a love story between Kasady and Francis, a/k/a “Shriek,” that gets a few minutes of screen time.

Serkis and screenwriter Kelly Marcel (Hardy lands a “story” credit here) bite down hard on the notion that the movie will score big points with audiences on the one-liners from Venom’s sandpaper-smooth voiceover and lots and lots of CGI and visual effects. Granted, these effects are vastly improved from the first Venom but Serkis still can’t maneuver his way around some overzealous slicing and dicing in the editing suite.

A mid-credits scene may surprise casual fans, since Venom apparently has some spiderwebs to deal with in the future. Overall, with just 80 or so minutes of storytelling time (not counting credits), there really isn’t anything surprising or super thrilling about Venom: Let There be Carnage.

You can do far worse - Hardy is still an amusing curiosity in trying to figure out how to play this character. Serkis amplifies the fun considerably. One line near the end of the film, for example, had my audience roaring with laughter.

Like, that’s cool and all…but, I mean, it’s one stellar moment in a rather mediocre film. While a handful of funny moments makes Venom: Let There be Carnage an improvement from an entertainment standpoint, Serkis and Marcel just do not have enough of a story to tell to make any of this matter all that much.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Reid Scott, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Little Simz, Jack Bandiera, Olumide Olorunfemi.

Director: Andy Serkis
Written by: Kelly Marcel (screenplay); Tom Hardy, Kelly Marcel (story)
Release Date: October 1, 2021
Columbia Pictures