Venom (2018) Review

"Like a turd in the wind."

-Venom

Journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) loses his job, his fiancé, and everything he cares about when he tries to go toe-to-toe with Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), the CEO of the Life Foundation, who Eddie is convinced up to no good.  Much later, Eddie gets a shot at revenge when he learns that Drake is conducting unethical experiments.  He sneaks into the labs, but is accidentally infected with a symbiote called Venom (Tom Hardy).  The two are forced to work together if they want to survive, but Eddie has to make sure to keep Venom in check, as the symbiote has a tendency to eat people.

What Works:

I was a little skeptical of Tom Hardy going in.  In the trailer, his accent and line deliveries are kinda odd.  For the most part, it works in the finished film.  Hardy does the best with what he is given and it's too bad he wasn't given stronger material to work with.

The best part of the movie, by far, is the relationship between Eddie and Venom.  Eddie can hear Venom speaking to him inside his head and that gives us a few very funny scenes and some interesting moments.  The film makes the most of its wasted potential in these scenes, which gives us a peek at what could have been.

The car chase action scene is totally fine.  It's by far the best action sequence of the film and actually gives us one very cool stunt.

Finally, Venom looks great.  The CGI is pretty fantastic and gives us a great look at this awesome character.  

What Sucks:

The 3rd act of this movie is pretty unbearable.  It's really hard to tell the two fighting symbiotes apart.  The characters look too similar, plus the setting is at night, which makes it even tougher to see.  It's a headache-inducing scene and I just wanted it to end.

Riz Ahmed tries his best, but his character isn't that interesting.  He's supposed to be an evil Elon Musk, but they don't give him enough to work with and his scheme is pretty bizarre.

The writing in general is just dumb.  That's the best way I can describe it: dumb.  It's mindless when it could have been something pretty spectacular.  For example, Eddie Brock is supposed to be a sort of anti-hero, but we never get any of that in the movie.  His goal is to save the planet.  That seems pretty heroic to me.  His motivations are not well written enough or thought out enough for him to be considered an anti-hero.  It's a shame because he could have really been great.

Finally, at one point in the film, Venom changes his motivations to help Eddie instead of just using him.  It's pretty baffling, to be honest.  The reasons behind his change in behavior don't make a lot of sense and the only scene they give us to make us understand is supposed to be a dramatic and touching scene, but my entire audience was cracking up when it happened.

Verdict:

I've seen Venom being called a crappy version of the movie Upgrade, and I'd say that's pretty accurate.  Everything I liked about Venom was done better in Upgrade.  Still, the relationship between Eddie and Venom is interesting, the movie has a solid action scene or two, some funny moments, and a great looking Venom, but the movie as a whole is dumb, poorly written, and has a terrible 3rd act.  It had tons of potential, but wasted most of it.  But we do get to see Eddie and Venom make out if you're into that...

 4/10: Bad