Review of Venom (2018) by Gordon B — 22 Nov 2018

Venom is mix bag for me. The film itself is thoroughly entertaining but in a very weird awful way. First of all the negatives. The tone is all over the place. It is serious then tries to add comedy then tries to add romance all in throughout the film, and it does not really work. The first act is a bit slow, it has to get everything going but I felt bored sitting in the theatre. The rest of the film moved pretty fast and I wont lie it was fun, however the third act was a generic as it could get with Venom vs Riot. It was the classic comic book we take the exact same character and change his name and appearance and fight the main hero/character. That was underwhelming. Michelle William's character was wasted. She felt like Gwen Stacy's role in TASM 2. Now more negative technical critics are: the plot was very generic it was a movie.

That followed the exact structure of a standard comic book film. That is the part that bugs me the most because I feel they could have gone in a completely unique direction. The cinematography was pretty consistent throughout but in the third act the direction was very blurry and overly fast that it kinda turned to blur on the screen. The dialogue between characters was atrocious at times specifically between Venom and Eddie it felt very dumb, like it was written by a elementary school kid. Also, certain characters were very one dimensional even the main villain lab guy I can't even remember his name nor Michelle Williams characters name. The visual effects were very inconsistent. At some points Venom looked stunning and other times he looked rough but enough with the negatives though now to the positives: Tom Hardy put a great performance of Eddie Brock, I was very skeptical at first but he won me over. Michelle Williams for what she was given as a character delivered well. Also, Jenny Slate did a compelling job with the limited screen time she received. The action was harmless and fun. And the sort of buddy cop essence of Venom's and Brock's relationship was interesting to see on screen. Overall there was missed potential with this film, but it was not as bad as critics made it seem. If you want to see a fun, action, superhero film than buy a ticket Venom. If you care for a compelling story than skip this one out. I am excited to see what they will do with the sequel (hopefully maybe R rated). PS there is two post credit scenes and I feel the first post credit was a bit forced and they could have gotten the message across of who Woody Harrelson's character was without the cheesy *name drop* line. The second post credit scene is a must Into the Spider-verse looks stunning. 5.5/10.