You can’t help feel like this movie wanted to be something it’s not. It almost immediately falls flat on its face and never fully recovers
Eddie Brock attempts to reignite his career by interviewing serial killer Cletus Kassady, who becomes the host of the symbiote Carnage and escapes prison after a failed execution
Venom was a feel good movie when it was released 4 years ago. It was different and maybe not for everyone but it made a killing at the box office and it was inevitable that a sequel was going to happen. The natural progression was to introduce a little anarchy, a little carnage……
I have very few good things to say about this movie, in fact the nicest thing I can say is that the most enjoyable part of the entire movie is free to watch because SONY released it as a clip to promote the film. Now Venom was weird and off the rails, but almost in the best way possible. Venom 2 is just on some sort of weirdo steroids that leads to no where and we end up getting some pretty bad performances and pretty much zero action.
After “saving” the city, Eddie Brock and his new pal Venom are still having the same problems. Venom wants to eat people and Eddie just wants his career to get back on track. The dynamic between the two is great, it’s fun, but there’s almost none of it happening and they go just over the top with it. They just leaned so hard on the weirdness that it felt so unnatural and forced this time around. So when they go visit their pal Cletus Kassady (Woody Harrelson) Eddie is upset that Venom is better at his job than he is. Talk about a serious misfire for casting. Wow, Harrelson is just god awful in this. Even from the Venom post-credit scene, I knew he wasn’t right for Carnage. He took his character from Natural Born Killers and just turned it up and down and spun it all around for a unmemorable performance. Yes Venom and Carnage look great but at the same time I also didn’t like the design of Carnage. They just made him red and bigger and that’s not always the case for the character. Carnage has an amazing prison escape sequence and it’s the highlight of the film, but that’s it. They wasted Carnage and rather cast someone to play the character they cast someone who’s name will look good on the poster. They don’t even feel like they are in the same movie.
The film is going by so fast, the pacing is insane. They don’t even give us time to be with these characters and understand Carnage a little more. The movie flies by, introducing more than one new foe. We meet Cletus’s girlfriend Shriek (Naomi Harris) who is so over the top, I couldn’t believe it. For a cool character and the dynamic between her powers and Carnage’s weakness was such a great idea and they just don’t even spend time on it. She’s just a looney cartoon wondering around this movie. Michelle Williams is back because I’m pretty sure she has too. So let’s make her the damsel in distress because why not right? She doesn’t want to be here and it’s obvious.
We don’t even get to see Venom try and be a good guy, I was hoping for him to have a scene at the start of the movie where he’s doing some good and kicking some ass but that never happens. With Andy Serkis directing I had high hopes for this film but it’s the worst movie I’ve seen this year. It’s all wasted potential. Venom is barely around, this isn’t the proper Carnage and nothing really happens. This whole movie is building towards the post-credit scene and it’s a shame. Cool, that’s the direction they are going but to waste a movie just so we could have some 90 second fan service is beyond me.
I’m just not sure what went wrong because I think the fist Venom is far superior because it even had a little more scariness to it. That’s the thing, Carnage is suppose to be crazy and terrifying and they couldn’t even do that right. Maybe it was the PG 13 rating but Carnage should have been straight out of a horror movie and he was just Venom but red.
Let’s see where they go from here but I’m glad that’s over and so is this review.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage = 43/100
