Ven­om: Let There Be Carnage

When Ven­om slith­ered into cin­e­mas in 2018, audi­ences were some­what baf­fled by Ruben Fleischer’s attempt to bring Marvel’s sym­biote odd cou­ple to the big screen. While crit­ics sav­aged the film, the pop­u­lace at large turned out in droves (per­haps as a result of the crit­i­cal sav­aging) and become the sixth most prof­itable film of the year, with rough­ly a $700 mil­lion return on Sony’s ini­tial investment.

A sequel was all but inevitable, but in a rare case of a stu­dio lis­ten­ing to fans for the bet­ter, this time around direc­tor Andy Serkis and writer Kel­ly Mar­cel lean into the weird, campy, qua­si-rom­com qual­i­ties of the rela­tion­ship between Ven­om and his reporter host, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy).

Pick­ing up where Ven­om left off, Eddie is try­ing to co-exist with his par­a­site bud­dy while secret­ly pin­ing for his ex-girl­friend Anne (Michelle Williams) and keep­ing a low pro­file from dogged detec­tive Patrick Mul­li­gan (Stephen Gra­ham) who has noticed Brock’s uncan­ny abil­i­ty for being around when­ev­er trou­ble kicks off.

Mean­while, local lunatic Cle­tus Kasady (Woody Har­rel­son) is in prison await­ing a poten­tial death sen­tence and invites Eddie to write an exclu­sive sto­ry on him in exchange for pub­lish­ing a cryp­tic mes­sage in the news­pa­per. Like Eddie, he’s pin­ing after a lost love, though in his case, it’s the incar­cer­at­ed son­i­cal­ly-gift­ed Frances Bar­ri­son (Naomie Har­ris) whom he grew up with at St Estes Home for Unwant­ed Chil­dren. Dur­ing a vio­lent encounter between Brock and Kasady, Ven­om acci­den­tal­ly cre­ates a sym­biote child who instant­ly bonds with Cle­tus: Carnage.

That’s about as much plot as you can expect from Ven­om: Let There Be Car­nage, as the film takes its title as a mis­sion state­ment and the focus is square­ly on pack­ing as much action as pos­si­ble into its trim 97-minute run­time. At a point where super­hero films fre­quent­ly run clos­er to three hours in length, there’s some­thing to be said for the break­neck pace of this out­ing, although if any­thing, it’s a lit­tle too quick; anoth­er 15 min­utes or so might have helped flesh out the rela­tion­ship between Cle­tus and Car­nage, or Cle­tus and Frances, who doesn’t real­ly serve much of a pur­pose beyond pro­vid­ing a sec­ondary antagonist.

Michelle Williams fans will be dis­ap­point­ed (or per­haps relieved?) to hear her involve­ment is min­i­mal in this sequel, and it feels like it might be kinder to retire her char­ac­ter in the next Ven­om film, rather than have Williams suf­fer the indig­ni­ty of Sexy Ven­om again. Unlike her co-stars, Williams just doesn’t seem to be hav­ing enjoy­ing her­self, as if she knows this is pure­ly about secur­ing a pay­cheque to fund her next indie pas­sion project.

Hardy, on the oth­er hand, is hav­ing the time of his life. The rap­port between Eddie and Ven­om is so effort­less it’s easy to for­get he’s play­ing both roles, and it’s grat­i­fy­ing how eas­i­ly Hardy slips into the per­sona of a sweaty, weirdo los­er con­sid­er­ing his smoul­der­ing off-cam­era per­sona. Trans­form­ing the queer under­tones of the first movie into over­tones this time around, a high­light comes in the form of Ven­om vis­it­ing a rave, cov­er­ing him­self in glow­sticks, and declar­ing to a crowd that he is ​“out of the Eddie clos­et”. It’s absolute­ly absurd – and also a lot of fun. Sim­i­lar­ly, Har­rel­son is hav­ing a grand time back in his Nat­ur­al Born Killers rou­tine; it’s a shame the film doesn’t give Cle­tus and Eddie more screen time together.

With Sony seem­ing­ly hav­ing realised the ele­ment that’s most inter­est­ing about Ven­om is, in fact, the rela­tion­ship between Ven­om and Eddie Brock, the film takes itself less seri­ous­ly than its pre­de­ces­sor and is bet­ter for it, leav­ing behind all the grand sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tions in favour of…well, car­nage. It’s be no means a per­fect film, and could even ben­e­fit from push­ing the body hor­ror gross­ness of Ven­om fur­ther, but it feels marked­ly more sin­cere than most super­hero out­ings to date and with a charis­mat­ic duo at its core, there’s a lot to enjoy here.

A mid-cred­it scene hints that Ven­om might be return­ing to our screens soon­er than antic­i­pat­ed, and with that, there’s per­haps a con­cern Venom’s unique­ly chaot­ic vibe will be dialled back in an attempt to fit into the more uni­form world of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse, but only time will tell.