Movie Review: ‘Venom’

Review by Lauryn Angel

After last summer’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, Sony and Marvel’s next collaboration, Venom, has been highly anticipated. Unfortunately, Venom is not nearly as entertaining as Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Investigative reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) makes an enemy out of megalomaniacal mogul Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), loses his job with the network, and breaks up with his fiancé, Anne (Michelle Williams) in the span of one afternoon. And it’s difficult to feel sorry for him, as he pretty much deserves to lose his job and his girlfriend – but Drake is a schmuck, so his behavior is almost understandable. Almost. In attempt to regain his status and uncover Drake’s secrets, Brock becomes infected with a parasite – sorry, symbiote that introduces itself as Venom.

The movie follows the basic Marvel formula – a hero with a villain who is essentially an evil version of himself face off. But this face-off takes place relatively late in the film, and, frankly, since the story is fairly cookie-cutter, you know how it’s going to end. This is especially disappointing since Spider-Man: Homecoming broke away from this formula with great results. And speaking of Spider-Man, Venom is usually a Spider-Man villain, though this film is based largely on a six-issue limited series called Venom: Lethal Protector, which puts Eddie Brock in San Francisco instead of New York City. In the comic, Venom teams up with Spider-Man to fight the other symbiotes, and I can’t help thinking that a visit from Tom Holland’s Spidey might have enlivened this dull film.

It’s a shame that such talented actors were saddled with such a dull story. Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed, and Michelle Williams have all demonstrated their talents in other films, but here, they are all underwhelming. Eddie and Anne are supposed to be deeply in love, but there wasn’t any chemistry between Hardy and Williams.

It’s a shame, really, because the symbiotes look good on the screen. I really wanted to like Venom and the movie as a whole, but even with the chase scenes and the chomping of human heads as snacks, I found the film to be dull – until the mid-credits scene. But that scene alone is not enough to justify sitting through 1 hour and 52 minutes to get to.