Venom: Let There Be Carnage review

VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE: 

SEQUEL TO SPIDER-MAN SPIN-OFF HAS MORE BITE THIS TIME AROUND, ALBEIT THE END RESULT IS STILL JUST AS SILLY AS ITS PREDECESSOR! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

COLUMBIA PICTURES AND MARVEL

Venom is back to deal with some serious “Carnage” in Venom: Let There Be Carnage

 

            Marvel’s favorite “Odd Couple” is back for seconds in Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the second installment of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe and follow-up to the 2018 film, Venom. If you read my review of the first film when I reviewed it back in 2018 then you may remember I wasn’t the biggest fan of it as I kept seeing the potential of what it could have been as this deep, disturbing, and interesting character study about a man and an alien symbiote and the decision between using it for good or letting it consume him and being evil, basically a really adult comic book movie that just happens to be Spider-Man-related…that is not the film we got! 

            What we got was a cheesy throwback to comic book and superhero movies from the 90s with all the clichés and tropes, not to mention this badass Marvel anti-hero as pretty much the superhero version of Hitch. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t entertained by it despite the first film getting so many things wrong with the character and the Spider-Man property, the confused intentional/unintentional humor, the bizarre but surprisingly effective chemistry between Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max: Fury Road, Dunkirk) and Venom, and hammy dialogue made the first film a very entertaining so bad it’s good comic book movie, still better than his treatment in Spider-Man 3. 

            Despite mostly negative reviews from critics and fans of the character, the film was a huge success thus a sequel and a new cinematic universe were inevitable with films like Morbius and Kraven the Hunter soon to follow. That’s where this film comes in after a stinger at the end of the first film. 

            The film reunites Hardy, Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine, Shutter Island, My Week with Marilyn), and Reid Scott (My Boys, Veep, Late Night) reprising their roles as Eddie Brock/Venom, Anne Weying, and Dan Lewis and with Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Planet of the Apes (2011 trilogy), Marvel Cinematic Universe) taking over directing duties from Ruben Fleischer. 

            Is Venom: Let There Be Carnage an improvement over its predecessor or is it the cinematic equivalent of a turd in the wind? A bit of both actually! 

            It’s hard to say it’s a good film, but I was very entertained by it for some of the same reasons why I enjoy the first film and a few things that are improved this time around. Ultimately, it still doesn’t quite offer the gritty and dark Venom movie the character deserves, but as a dumb popcorn movie, it gets the job done. 

            Sometime after the events of the first film, we see Eddie Brock (Hardy) and Venom having a…complicated relationship together with Eddie wanting to live a normal life while Venom wants to be free to do as he pleases without Eddie’s rules about not eating people. However, trouble comes when serial killer, Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson-Zombieland 1 and 2, The Messenger, The Hunger Games franchise) gets a symbiote of his own, a much more violent creature bent on destruction and…Carnage!

            Eddie and Venom, with the help of Eddie’s ex-fiancé, Anne Weying (Williams) and her current fiancé, Dr. Dan Lewis (Scott) must figure out a way to put aside their differences in order to stop Carnage’s reign of terror before he and Cletus destroy everything Eddie loves. Oh, and Cletus also has a fiancé with breathtakingly powerful screaming known as Frances Barrison/Shriek (Naomie Harris-Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, James Bond franchise, Moonlight), there’s that too! 

            The film also stars Stephen Graham (Snatch, Public Enemies, The Irishman) as Mulligan, Serkis, the film’s director providing the voice for Carnage, and Peggy Lu reprising her role from the first film as convenience store owner, Mrs. Chen. 

            Overall, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is only a slight improvement over its predecessor as this one has a much stronger villain that’s memorable in both human and symbiote forms and better camera work during the action sequences, especially during the climax. But it still has all the chaotic, mindless insanity that the first film had, only this time they fully embrace the stupidity, you don’t have to wait about 45 minutes to get to all the crazy Venom stuff as it pretty much starts off with it and it only gets sillier and sillier as the film goes. 

            The movie literally starts with Hardy arguing with Venom in a women’s restroom stall about not eating people while a woman in the stall next to them is listening to the whole conversation, a completely absurd fight scene between Eddie and Venom inside their apartment, and Venom partying at a rave…I am not making this up! It’s complicated, because the film improves on a few things from the first film, but it somehow gets even crazier at the same time. 

            The acting for the most part is solid, which was something I praised about the first movie especially Tom Hardy’s performance as eccentric reporter turned symbiote host, Eddie Brock and I enjoyed the chemistry between Hardy and Venom, which is still the case in this movie. However, what can you do to balance one crazy performance…with another in the form of Woody Harrelson as Cletus/Carnage is a delightfully deranged, scenery-chewing villain and the banter between him and Hardy is a lot of fun and very reminiscent to Nicolas Cage and John Travolta in Face/Off. 

Unlike Riz Ahmed in the first film where he starts off as a fun, clichéd business villain who turns into a dull monster once he gets the symbiote, Harrelson’s Cletus is memorable in both human and symbiote form with Carnage’s role basically like a rebellious son to Venom who hates him in the same way a son would resent his father, as he was created by Cletus biting Eddie’s hand and licking a drop of his symbiote-infested blood. I will admit, there is something during the climax regarding Harrelson and Carnage’s bond that I thought was kind of smart and dumb at the same time that echoes Eddie and Venom’s relationship. 

The action sequences are very CG-driven, but they are shot a lot better than in the first film. Unlike, the final battle in the first movie where it was too close and cluttered, I was able to make most of the action out during the climax with no obnoxious camera gimmicks. 

The post-credits scene made the whole movie for me, much like how the ending of Venom included a scene from the then-upcoming, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Without giving major spoilers, let’s just say, Eddie and Venom discover that there is “No Way Home”.