Venom: Let There Be Carnage is the latest Marvel film which brings back Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom. Kelly Marcel wrote the screenplay with Andy Serkis taking up the director’s mantle. The cast also includes Michelle Williams, Woody Harrelson, Naomie Harris, and Stephen Graham.
So this one is chock full of unrequited love. Eddie Brock is working as a reporter and is still missing his girlfriend, Anne Weying, played by Williams, who is now engaged to someone else. His relationship with his symbiote, Venom is on the rocks. Psychotic killer, Cletus Kasady, is missing his childhood love, Frances, while facing execution. Frances has an unusually piercing scream which has her incarcerated in an institution reserved for dangerous mutants, and she is not happy to be so separated from her favorite lunatic. No one seems to be able to sort out their love lives here. Brock pays Harrelson’s Cletus a little visit. That meeting gets a little tense when Cletus gets a little taste of Venom. Of course, we know what’s next. Venom’s little spot of blood mutates inside Cletus, transforming him into Carnage, who just wants to find his lost love so he is not alone in his indulging his bloodlust.
Harrelson takes on the role of Carnage and is reliably creepy and unhinged. Harris does fine as Frances, who has her own issues. Frances is also known as Shriek. Hardy’s performance is quite good in spite of some weak dialogue. The special effects and the fight scenes are done well enough to make this just entertaining enough. Venom’s single-mindedness when it comes to eating bad guys is supposed to be amusing in some gallows sort of way, but I was finding it somewhat annoying. So this is a comic book movie, so there needs to be grace extended when it comes to expecting a lot of coherence. I get that, but somehow I felt that some opportunities were missed to really elicit some laughs. Of course, the humor would be quite dark and disturbing, but I don’t shy away from that.
Basically, this is another film that left me a little cold. I shouldn’t be disappointed since this is a comic book film. but somehow this ended up being more of a letdown than I anticipated. The only really impressive aspect was the effects, but that is even not all that notable considerable most movies in this genre can at least get the special effects right. It’s not the worst film I have seen, but it is one of a big blob of unremarkable cinematic offerings. This is still rather annoying because I seem to be saying much of the same thing about the recent films I have endured, which makes this latest blog feel rather unremarkable. Better luck next time, Marvel.
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