Julien Neaves, Editor
Plot: Down-on-his luck reporter Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote return as the anti-hero Venom. And this time they must battle a new foe when a second symbiote bonds with convicted serial killer Cletus Kasady to become the bloodthirsty villain Carnage.
Review: Now the original Venom film was not what you would call a “great film”. The CGI was ugly, the villain forgettable and the plot paper thin and super generic. But an extremely fun turn by Tom Hardy, some deliciously dark comedy and a couple fun moments with costar Michelle Williams raised it from being a subpar effort. But Venom: Let There Be Carnage? No such luck.
Now I felt like I wasted my time watching this film so let me not waste your time with an overly long review. I’m gonna knock it off in three strikes. Strike One is for a “Venom” movie there is very little actual Venom. Eddie and the symbiote spend most of the movie having a lover’s spat which takes the form of extremely forced comedy shenanigans that miss more than they hit. Most of the time we seen the full Venom is in flat comedic segments especially one extremely cringeworthy club scene. Now the first film had the odd couple comedy as well but it was executed with much more thought and cleverness. Here it is just low brow and lazy. And the film focused so much on Carnage it felt more like a Carnage movie with Venom as a guest star, which is not a good thing.
And speaking of Carnage, Strike Two goes for him. Now I think Woody Harrelson was an inspired choice to play Kasady and to his credit he brings the menace and the bloodlust. And I did get some shades of Natural Born Killers in his relationship with fellow baddie Frances Barrison/Shriek (played by Bond star Naomie Harris). We do also get some cool action moments though I am still not a fan of the CGI work. But Harrelson could not do much with such an undeveloped character and weak story. In terms of the Carnage storyline the 90s Spider-Man animated series did it way, way better.
Strike Three is for the runtime. In the 80s and 90s one hour and 30 minutes was the average movie runtime but nowadays most films are closer to two hours. Now I do not agree with bloating movie unnecessarily but I feel like Let There Be Carnage needed that extra runtime. Everything feels so rushed and half-baked, and that includes the extremely underwhelming final battle. Heck, poor Michelle Williams felt like an afterthought.
This film is the epitome of wasted potential and low effort. There is literally one reason to watch this bland, uninspired sequel and that is the post-credits scene. I won’t spoil it but it’s doozy. But everything that comes before feels like an extremely rough first draft of a script and they decided, “What the hell? Let’s just go with it.”
Editor Jules’s Score: 3 out of 10
So what did you think of Let There Be Carnage? And you can check out more superhero content below:
Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by Freddy Krueger, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like “12 flavours of awesome sauce”. Read more.