As I walked into my screening of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, there was one question living rent-free in my head: “Will they actually pull it off this time?” Because of course, the bulk of my expectations for the new film were naturally based on its predecessor, 2018’s Venom.
And at the end of the day, Venom is kind of an uneven mess. That’s not to say it was completely devoid of potential, but suffice it to say the execution left a lot to be desired. But for all its faults, Venom had one saving grace: Tom Hardy and his often bizarre acting choices. To the extent that the film works, it’s largely thanks to Hardy (call it “the Nicolas Cage effect”). Even then, though, there’s a sense that they stumbled into that secret sauce, either during filming or perhaps even in editing. As a result, it’s impossible to go into Venom: Let There Be Carnage without wondering whether they could recreate that happy accident and bring at least some of the first film’s potential to fruition.
The answer, thankfully, is yes.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a considerable improvement on the first film. While it’s not without its flaws (more on that later), it’s much more narratively focused and unlike Venom, it never feels like it’s been hacked to bits in the edit bay. But as important as all that is, much of the film’s improvements are achieved by essentially doubling down on the things that worked last time, and what worked in the 2018 film often boiled down to Tom Hardy in the dual role of journalist Eddie Brock and the alien symbiote Venom.
Accordingly, this is a movie that is fundamentally about relationships. For the most part, that means centering and exploring the chaotic and dysfunctional relationship between Eddie and Venom. But it also means contrasting it with the relationship between Cletus Kasady and Frances Barrison/Shriek (played by Woody Harrelson and Naomie Harris, respectively), which of course is a different sort of chaotic, one that often evokes Harrelson’s turn in Natural Born Killers. Naturally, there are other relationships at play (such as that between Venom, Eddie, and ex-fiancee Anne (Michelle Williams), but those two are the ones most central to the film.
Of course, the dynamic between our two villains isn’t the only thing that has echoes of that Oliver Stone classic. It’s often hard to see Woody Harrelson’s performance as Cletus Kasady as anything other than a riff on Mickey Knox. That’s not a bad thing exactly, as the man is very good at playing a psycho killer (Qu’est-ce que c’est?). But I am ultimately of two minds on the subject. See, in the comics Kasady (even before joining with the Carnage symbiote) was always more manic than Harrelson plays him. What Harrelson does isn’t bad. He is an unfailingly menacing presence, and you struggle to take your eyes off of him when he’s on-screen. But it just doesn’t quite mesh with the version of the character I’ve had in my head for the last quarter-century. But then neither does this version of Venom, so take that for what it’s worth.
A bigger problem is that Shriek is just not given very much to do. Yes, she and Carnage share a romantic rampage with a dynamic that will be familiar to anyone who’s read Maximum Carnage, but for most of the film, she’s just sort of… there. In the background. Frankly, she exists more to provide a goal or motivation for Cletus than as a character in her own right. Granted, this is a character who has made precious little impression outside of early stories like Maximum Carnage and Shrieking, but that just means that the filmmakers had a mostly blank slate to work with. And instead of taking advantage of that blank slate, we get a major character with hardly any agency in the plot and a lot of Harris standing around and channeling her performance as Tia Dalma in Pirates of the Caribbean, which is frankly a waste.
Speaking more broadly, the film also has some weird pacing problems resulting from the way it balances its subplots. This is most pronounced is in the second act, when a particular subplot (or rather a central sequence in that subplot) brings the film screeching to a halt right as it should be picking up. It’s hard to discuss it without getting into spoilers, but trust me, you’ll know it when you see it. The real kicker, though, is that the subplot in question is necessary to the story the film is telling and those scenes (or some version of them) needed to be there as a result. I suspect it’s more an issue with their placement in the film than the sequence in and of itself, with the pacing issue they create having potentially been avoidable if it had come earlier in the edit.
Despite these issues though, when all is said and done, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a solidly mid-tier comic book movie. If you’re looking for a fun ride, this will certainly do the trick. Definitely not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.
Oh, and stay in your seat when the credits roll. The tag scene is a game-changer.