Film Review — Venom: Let There Be Carnage
Tom Hardy is engaging in this unremarkable but enjoyable second helping of Venom
Venom: Let There Be Carnage has received a glut of rather poor reviews. Are they deserved? It rather depends on your level of expectation. The first film wasn’t critically well-received either, but the box office suggested audiences wanted more of the same. Hence this essentially unremarkable but surprisingly entertaining sequel, directed by Andy Serkis.
With dubious journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) already bonded with superpowered alien symbiote Venom, the agreeably anarchic mayhem kicks off from the word go. This in itself makes it an improvement on the first film, which took far too long to break free of the unnecessarily complicated set-up and kick into high gear. The plot involves Eddie interviewing soon-to-be-executed serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson). After provoking an altercation, Cletus bites Eddie’s hand, drawing blood, and thus ingesting part of the symbiote thingy, causing a mutation once Cletus’s lethal injection execution goes horribly pear-shaped. Enter Carnage, a bigger, stronger, nastier version of Venom. No prizes for guessing who will have to try and put the genie back in the bottle.
