Review of Venom (2018) by Zachary S — 29 Dec 2018

Honestly, I see gold in this one. Venom feels like it's lacking ~30 minutes worth of content and was hastily chopped up for the final cut with some great parts laying on the cutting room floor. The pacing is ungodly fast throughout the entire film which only adds to my speculation that some higher-up really didn't want it to cross the two hour mark. It's funny, dark, exciting, but lacking in just a few places. If there ever exists a directors cut of this film, I can almost guarantee it's a more enjoyable experience.

The CG was fine (I don't really have high standards to begin with), but your mileage may vary. The characters were developed.... enough. Enough to make some sense.

Though, again, this lack of characterization and motivation feels unintentional, like it was supposed to be there, but just... wasn't.

In short, Venom needed more time to keep it's pacing down and characters sufficiently grounded. Otherwise, it's actually quite nice and Tom Hardy's performance couldn't have been better.

4/5 simply due to my own little theory about this film's production. It really does feel like a genuinely good movie that got ripped apart in post.