Venom

From director Jim Gillespie and producer Kevin Williamson comes this generic slasher flick revolving around a group of teens that are terrorized by a psychopath, a situation that’s exacerbated by the fact that said psychopath is possessed by the souls of 13 other psychopaths. Venom is, for a while, surprisingly decent insofar as contemporary slashers are concerned; the setup is sound, there are a few good kills, and the actors are effective (if altogether bland). But the voodoo stuff – previously irritating but easy to ignore – becomes far more prominent than one would like, and the film eventually degenerates into a conventional and hackneyed mess. The relentlessly dark atmosphere and surprising lack of gore certainly doesn’t help matters, nor does the inclusion of a bizarre subplot revolving around one of the characters’ fractured relationship with his father (who just happens to be the killer). There’s one effective moment towards the end in which one character sacrifices their life for another, but the majority of Venom‘s latter half is flat-out tedious (although one can’t help but admire the sequence featuring one hapless victim’s death by paint).

** out of ****