Venom: Let There Be Carnage Review!

 Alright! Today I'm reviewing the long-delayed sequel to 2018's surprise hit Venom. And that's not just a small surprise, that's an $856 million surprise. I mean... wow...  that's a lot of money... 

Anyways, I didn't see that movie. Planned on it, but then didn't. I saw it at my local library once! But I haven't seen it. Didn't really need to to understand the sequel, really. Seeing the trailer and having basic inferring capacities compensated just fine, no need to waste two hours on confirming what I know. 

But I saw decided to see Let There Be Carnage because of the villain. Never been a big Venom fan, but Carnage? Sure, I'd love to see Carnage! Sign me up! And for the most part, the movie was mildly disappointing in a lot of ways, the biggest draw being a core aspect of that. 

You see, Carnage is a venom symbiote who bonded with a cannibalistic serial killer. That's intense. That has the potential for lots of disturbing crap that might endear the character to the audience in that morbid Ted Bundy sort of way. But no, he's never really developed. 

The way it looks in the movie is that he killed two people as a child and then was put in a psychiatric ward with Shriek, his equally lame lady love. They uncover a large number of dead bodies (Exclusively shown in body bags), but you never hear a lot about how Cletus is disturbing. Woody Harrelson brings a lot to the role with a scarily innocent child-like mentality to the character and cryptic poetry, but just the slightest bit more on the production side could have saved the movie. 

Woody Harrelson does a great job, but he's not given much to do.

There's a story I remember about Jeffrey Dahmer - that one of the incidents that led to his death in prison was that he taunted fellow inmates by mushing prison food into body parts and then smearing ketchup on them. That's a perfectly fine PG way of getting the point across that he's psychotic and terrifying. The movie never does anything that disturbing. It just says he kills people, shows him killing them in dark lighting with dusty wind, off-screen killing, and large explosions. Only once is a headless human body actually seen in the movie, and it's only a standout because it's something you should've expected. 

He wasn't just underdeveloped on the Carnage side. His relationship with Eddie Brock, the cornerstone of the movie, was severely... misguided. There's little to no reason for Cletus to believe so heavily in Eddie, but the movie keeps telling us about it anyways. Nor does it do anything with that. Upon escaping jail, Cletus immediately goes to find Shriek, leaving his weird relationship with Eddie behind. Wouldn't it have been a powerful parallel for Cletus to be seen as a parasite to everyone he tries to get close to? 

And then the actual Carnage symbiote is weird... it seems to have no motivation and barely plays into the movie. While Eddie and Venom constantly bicker and seem to be partners, Cletus seems to be the owner of Carnage? Which didn't make sense, because Carnage (In his few speaking moments) seemed very different. I started questioning why he was even letting Cletus run the operation. 

The pacing also dragged, which is really weird for an hour and a half movie. Not a good sign. But hey, the music was surprisingly dope so... you win some, you lose some. The CGI and production values were also great, and I applaud the movie for keeping the stakes relatively small-scale. 

Alas, we must acknowledge the elephant in the room. Much to the woes of lots of internet comment sections, this movie is rated PG-13, and unlike director Andy Serkis' claim that it would stretch the limit of that rating, it plays as a pretty digestible movie. It needed more of The Tomorrow War's opening sequence - random and unnecessary violence to throw the audience off-balance. 

Carnage kills, like, three people? And both beheadings are off-screen, one just barely. This movie didn't need a hard R, it needed a Zack Snyder's Justice League R at most - a PG-13 movie with blood. There's one scene where Carnage breaks a bunch of prisoners out of jail and I could've sworn the movie was about to go absolutely berserk. We could've had Yondu's arrow scene but with Carnage! It would've been epic! But no, he bloodlessly kills two people. 

Ironically, I don't feel as if the character Carnage was misrepresented as I do Taskmaster in Black Widow. He still had the look, vibe, and carnality of the character in his on-screen appearances, they just had the chance for an all-time terrifying villain and played it really safe. 

I did like a lot of the movie, though. It's legitimately hilarious for the first half and Tom Hardy is giving it all as both parts of The Odd Couple. The chemistry Tom Hardy has with himself playing black goo is astounding. 

Funny enough, it kinda reminded me of Spider-Man: Far From Home, a movie that you'll likely only remember for the post-credit scene.

Overall, I give Venom: Let There Be Carnage a 6/10. "Fun chemistry between Tom Hardy and a CGI glob just barely overcome a tepid plot and remarkably forgettable villain."

Would I watch a third? Sure man, this was fun.