Review of Venom (2018) by Honest-Yan — 06 Oct 2018

Going in to this movie I was aware of fake reviews from lady gaga fans trying to destroy the hype. I was also aware that the movie had issues with not having Spiderman in it, seeing that Venom is a dark version of Spiderman and Spiderman is an essential character in the original story.

I was also aware that this movie was about a black jelly creature from space. Going in I had relatively low expectations and a bottle of Vodka. Some critics have complained about an inconsistent tone in this, a move about black jelly from space.

Did anyone go to see this movie to measure the consistency of it's tone, and feel dissatisfied because there were both scary scenes and jokes? I think some of the critics had unreasonable expectations of what is essentially a B-Movie with a big budget.

The space jelly is not great CGI but, who is to say what space jelly looks like, maybe it looks like CGI? It took me out of the movie the first time I saw it but I was OK with it by the end. The main antagonist is overshadowed by one of the most selfish and nasty girlfriends in history, I was hooked to see whether Eddie would retaliate to her insensitive actions and wondered if she was going to be revealed as a supervillain herself.

What makes this movie good is Tom Hardy's performance as the only two characters that matter in this movie. Brock and Venom have distinct, compelling characters and there is a subtle but clever merging of personalities as they spend time together.

A large portion of the movie explores their relationship and this is a real strength. Hardy joked that his best part of the movie was everything that was cut from the movie, I wonder if there will be an R rated cut of this? I would love to see more and hope that the teased sequels happen.

If you want to see a movie in which alien slime controls Tom Hardy's brain, if that appeals to you, then you will really like this movie. If you think it is far fetched or silly, maybe this is not the movie for you.