Venom: Let There Be Carnage review – Silly symbiotic sequel

I would be lying if I said I was a big fan of 2018’s Venom. This may come as a surprise to some of you reading this. That’s because Sony’s live-action adaptation of the immensely popular Marvel Comics Spider-Man villain/sometimes ally was one of those juxtaposed films which got loved by the masses but poo-pooed by critics. And I was one of said poo-pooers.

Historically speaking though, superhero sequels tend to up the ante significantly over their predecessors as that pesky origin story is now out of the way and the hero can finally let loose against a worthy foe. The potential for that quality level-up was certainly on the table in the clunky named Venom: Let There Be Carnage as the talented Andy Serkis takes over the directing chair, while this follow-up would also pay off on the first film’s surprise post-credit tease of Woody Harrelson (in a li’l orphan Annie wig that is thankfully dropped here) as fan-favourite villain Cletus Kasady aka Venom’s crimson homicidal arch nemesis Carnage. And yet, here I am, disappointed once more.

Now I will readily admit that if you enjoyed the first film, you will probably find more to like here than I did (Hell, you may even love it!). And that’s because a lot of my issues with Venom: Let There Be Carnage are actually repeats of my issues with Venom. Namely, while I feel that star/producer/co-writer Tom Hardy’s twitchy reporter Eddie Brock and his relationship with the titular toothy alien symbiote inhabiting his body (also voiced by Hardy) is very fun – mostly due to Hardy’s fully committed helter-skelter thespian shadowboxing routine – the rest of the movie simply doesn’t stack up.

The central thrust of the story here is a double break-up as Brock is still struggling to get over former fiancée Anne (the great Michelle Williams again criminally underused) when he and Venom also have a falling out over the latter’s rather inconvenient need to consume human brains, causing the symbiote to scamper off find a new host and live his brain-munching life. And all of this happens after a violent encounter between Brock and Kasady during a pre-execution prison interview sees the latter ingest some of the former’s blood, gaining a symbiote of his own. That’s admittedly a decent setup and the film’s opening half covering this portion of the script co-penned by the returning Kelly Marcel and Hardy definitely offers some entertainment. But then things come off the rails.

Once again we have an undercooked villain but this one feels even more egregious because instead of a symbiote most fans wouldn’t be able to pick out of a villain lineup, THIS IS CARNAGE! The red symbiote bonded to a twisted serial killer is a comic book icon and is supposed to be pure unhinged evil who tears his way through Venom and any other peacekeeping forces. And, as we learn through a pretty neat animated flashback sequence, Harrelson’s Kasady is indeed a very bad boy, having killed both his mother and grandmother as a kid, before eventually growing up to become a serial killer. However, once bonded, Carnage doesn’t really do much in the movie.

Sure he breaks out of prison and then also breaks out Shriek – Kasady’s equally twisted, super-powered romantic squeeze, played by a usually good Naomie Harris shackled here with grating vocals and not much else – from where she’s being held, but it’s not exactly “maximum carnage”. In fact, there’s practically no work done to establish Carnage as a currently credible threat. He just shows up halfway through the movie, declares he wants to kill Venom and then the two fight. Once. Oh and we know they’re fighting only because of the grunts on-screen, as Serkis hides all the much improved visual effects and solid character designs behind annoying shaky-cam action directing.

As to why Carnage wants to kill Venom, that’s never explained. Much like the How’s and Why’s of Carnage suddenly being able to create tornadoes or – unintentionally hilariously – hack the internet. That level of WTF-ery is present throughout as Serkis leans hard into cartoonish goofiness. At times it feels very reminiscent of Sam Raimi’s horror-comedy work, but with none of that auteur’s finesse to keep it from going too far. Venom is a character born out of the grungy self-seriousness of the 1990s, all skulls and chains and air-brushed metal album covers of zombies playing guitars, but here the cheese gets dialed up to manic levels. This is the type of movie where somebody definitely shouts out the film’s title in melodramatic fashion.

And I would have been okay with all of that if Serkis and co actually also leaned as hard into the source comics’ propensity for violence, but once again we have a Venom movie burdened by a embarrassingly bloodless PG-13 rating. This was already a headscratcher in the previous film, seeing as “Lethal Protector” Venom is well-known for gobbling up bad guy body-parts like chicken nuggets. It gets even more puzzling when you now add in Carnage, a mass-murdering monster on the comics page, and yet there’s nary a drop of blood to be found here, even when characters are being impaled on tendrils or having their heads bit off.

All of that being said, a lack of crimson splashes is the least of this film’s problems. Serkis makes odd filmmaking choices, most of the talented cast is wasted, and the glaring gaps in the script makes me think there could be another 30 minutes of story- and character-building footage laying on a proverbial editing room floor somewhere. That last bit is especially noticeable given that Venom: Let There Be Carnage clocks in with an abrupt running time of just 97 minutes with credits included. At least if you sit through all 97 minutes though, you’ll get treated to a post-credits scene that packs more a comic book wallop than everything that precedes it.