With gooey cannibalistic aliens, a twitchy Tom Hardy and quite a few ‘Oh God, I think I just ate that guy’s head’ moments as the marketing campaign for this Marvel anti-hero solo flick, it comes at little surprise that Venom’s film debut plunders as a confused oddball of an action film. While you’ll likely get taken aback by Tom Hardy’s savagely dedicated acting, laugh at some rather mindless humour and enjoy some tongue-wringing action, Venom’s confused style and forgettable characters makes it pretty venomously soulless.
Charismatic conspiracy-busting journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) loses his job and wife after attempting to expose corrupt techno-scientist Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) who’s secretly been importing obscure alien specimens. Eddie ends up getting infected by one of these symbiotic alien ‘parasites’ which fuse with hosts to survive Earth’s atmosphere while granting them superhuman powers, such as a Mickey Mouse-esque extended arm punch and an undying craving for human flesh. This one, known as Venom, forms a tight love-hate co-op with Eddie as they work towards a common goal of stopping Drake reigning death onto Venom’s new home with an army of returning symbiotes, being careful neither of the two ‘losers’ eats a more-than-needed number of human heads as possible on the way. Yes, that’s the plot. Completely serious. It feels as if the film wanted to retain a small-scale new-home-who-dis plot of exploration with Venom but had to pull a Suicide Squad and throw in a full-bang earth-at-stake premise to play safe with such a risky style.
Now if there’s anything the makers did right with this film, it was picking a script that allowed the dark confidence-filled chameleon Tom Hardy to completely go off the deep end as a struggling Eddie Brock. When you take a step back from the symbiote’s snarling, deep-throat beckoning, it’s almost unreal how comically psychopathic Mr Hardy gets with a solo ‘duo’ role, with his whole voices-in-your-head acting at different stages of anger, paranoia or just sheer terror being alone worth seeing the film. Even before we hear the first ‘Eddy’ and he girly-screams into the bath tub, we’re treated to comical half-savage half-paranoid displays of him trying to supress his symbiote’s cannibalistic urges while frantically scavenging for ‘undead’ food, most notably when he bursts into a restaurant to tell his ex-wife about his new findings but ends up jumping in the lobster tank, wrenching up and gorging on a live crustacean. But his performance sometimes feels jarred with the script’s sometimes flat and unfitting humour which kills the whole threatening nature of the character’s situation.
And as for what ultimately brings Venom down is its misconception of identity. It’s often intensely dark visuals and gritty colouring inspire a very neo-noir style, only for the half-intentional half-unintentionally laughable scripts of exaggerated slapstick, mindlessly goofy exchanges between the two protagonists and knee-slapping one-liners to merge things into a confusing, incoherent mood. I’m not saying that Venom is an entirely serious character in his comic entrees (check out the Lethal Protector comics if you don’t believe me) but the film’s refusal to calm down with trying every dish of mood and genre into one just meshes into a hit-and-miss combination of horror, comedy, apocalyptic tension and sit-com level characters. Even its much-anticipated ‘violent’ moments are somewhat euphemistically executed, rather underwhelming for a character recognised for his savagery, mostly just scraping that 15 rating. And unlike your typical Marvel superhero film that puts unique takes on reused situations, such as Black Panther’s car chase and Ant Man’s small-scale fistfights, Venom takes a notable lot of rehashed Hollywood action schtick with little variety, including a forgettable overly-long bike chase which plagues most recent blockbusters and an old ying-and-yang hero/villain motive that doesn’t even try making such a bare-boned confrontation memorable.
But through all the discreet layers of horror, explosions and characters with the depth of paper, Tom Hardy and Venom’s relationship is the undoubted saving grace. Eddie’s broken loser life coming into contact with a darkly comical, yet savage alien that pushes him into a life of anti-heroism is thankfully amusingly engaging as the pilot controls rapidly shift between who’s actually in power rather than playing it straight as a dull neo-slasher flick. Not only is it amusingly unique to see a consistent inner-debate for someone trying to keep their life in order while trying to resist easting people but it also adds the refreshment of focusing on a protagonist’s relationship with someone other than a cardboard-cut-out love interest, which is also present (Michelle Williams) but isn’t at all anything to waste time talk about, as well as a handful of other characters (or plot devices) with noticeably awful scripts.
Another dark side to the writing is how laughably coincidental aspects of Brock’s journey are: he’s multiply seen talking to a homeless person near his home, only for her to dumbfoundedly turn out to be one of Drake’s test subjects for the symbiote merge, as well as Drake’s betraying assistant somehow knowing how to come across the lowly Eddie Brock, another example of the film’s inconspicuous characterisation.
As for the antagonist(s), while the whole god-imposing mad scientist trope has been beyond done to death, I found myself rather enjoying Riz Ahmed’s performance as the ruthless but collected Carlton Drake, giving several hilariously narcissistic Bible-rehearsing speeches. The symbiote turned out to be a pretty unique expendable device to inspire his whole third-revelation gimmick, though his actual plan for mankind is beyond ridiculous as well as the flipsides-of-the-same-coin hero and villain get ups and final battle also plaguing the film’s identity (when will superhero films finally end this trope?!) The final fight doesn’t even have a unique spin with setting or cinematography, mostly just being an overabundance of cgi, though does have one of my favourite shots when the suits start to mesh. Riot himself though, is a nicely intimidating antagonist who makes for some of the more creatively violent moments. But he isn’t hyped up in any coherent way, succumbing to the film’s refusal to stick to one genre as he mostly just passes host-to-mute-host that zombieishly goes around spiking and cutting people, seeming like a rather unfitting slasher- homage before we see his axe-handed true self.
Venom is, in some way, like the symbiote it so represents, you either embrace the ‘Partners in Crime’ chemistry motive for a comic ride of mindless enjoyment or reject its symbiosis and suffer through its inconsistency as a result. Let’s hope the next Venom films have a slightly more collected and focused script and tension that actually shows its rightful face behind the mindlessly dark humour, and quarrelsome desperations for fitting in with the Marvel foundation, including Woody Harrelson’s awful awful ginger wig.
60/100