Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Directed by Andy Serkis, Venom: Let There Be Carnage follows Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock as he and his symbiote companion are forced to battle a fearsome antagonist named Carnage (Woody Harrelson). There’s little doubt that Venom: Let There Be Carnage gets off to an almost astonishingly disastrous start, as Serkis, armed with Kelly Marcel’s screenplay, initially stresses the meandering and hopelessly tedious dynamic between Eddie and the wisecracking Venom – with the eye-rollingly off-kilter (and goofy) bent of the pair’s scenes together essentially preventing the viewer from working up an ounce of interest in or enthusiasm for their exploits together. The far-from-engrossing atmosphere is compounded by a continuing emphasis on frustratingly over-the-top action set-pieces, with Serkis’ overuse and needless reliance on garish computer-generated special effects draining all the excitement and impact out of, for example, a sequence wherein Harrelson’s character breaks out of prison. It consequently goes without saying that the talented cast, which also includes Michelle Williams and Naomie Harris, is generally left floundering within the context of uniformly broadly-written characters, and although Serkis has admittedly punctuated the picture with a very small handful of compelling interludes (eg Harrelson and Harris’ vicious figures are reunited), Venom: Let There Be Carnage ultimately builds towards a decidedly intolerable climax that does, in the end, cement its place as an especially ill-conceived and misbegotten comic-book sequel.

*1/2 out of ****