[4.6/10] The things that were good about the first Venom movie are still good in *Venom: Let There Be Carnage*. Tom Hardy is still going to some admirably weird places with his performance. Venom himself as the film’s Greek Chorus, tweaking Eddie Brock and calling foul on the dumbest parts of the movie, remains entertaining. And the interplay between the two, one of cinema’s most peculiar odd couple routines, continues to be the main draw and saving grace of this otherwise generic franchise.
The things that were bad about the first Venom movie are still bad in *Venom: Let There Be Carnage*. The script is still generic at best, and hot garbage at worst. The characters are thin as a playing card. The dialogue is dumb and on-the-nose. The moments outside of Eddie and Venom trying to make it work are a paint-by-numbers superhero movie. And the entire production feels like it was made for and made by fourteen-year-old boys.
The main difference is the entry of Woody Harrelson as Cletus Kassidy, a serial killer with a fixation on Eddie Brock, as I have no idea what the hell he’s doing here. Charitably, he’s making bold choices for an outsized character. Less charitably, he’s a caricature of a caricature of Hannibal Lecter whose look, feel, and every word, sounds patently ridiculous.
His alter ego, Carnage, the inadvertent symbiote offspring of Venom, is no better. At least Cassidy has reasons for his grudges, hackneyed and unavailing though they may be. He’s desperate to be reunited with his beloved girlfriend Shriek, is upset at Eddie for how he reported Cassidy’s story, and has an off-the-shelf bad childhood. The writing and performances of these things are all bad and gossamer thin, but at least they’re there.
Carnage wants to kill Venom because…who the hell knows. Like basically everyone in this movie outside of Eddie and Venom, Carnage isn’t here to be a character. He’s here to either make weak jokes or get thrown into ugly, forgettable action sequences. The film wastes Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, and Reid Scott in barely-written, tepidly-acted roles. But Carnage is mostly there to transform into various monstrous forms and cause a wave of death and destruction that leave me utterly ambivalent.
Theoretically, even in a ramshackle comic book movie that makes a hash of its story and character, the spectacle ought to be the appeal. And every once in a while, it is. Simpler scenes, like Venom controlling Eddie to recreate Cassidy’s scribbles or cooking him a cheer-up breakfast with reckless flair, are loony and enjoyable enough to be reminiscent of no less a Spider-Verse maestro than Sam Raimi. And not for nothing, there’s a brief animated sequence depicting Cassidy’s grim backstory that has more style and creative imagery in a few minutes than the rest of the film combined.
But the big set pieces are muddy, indifferent garbage. The film’s big monsters are unconvincing CGI creations who lack the weight or panache to have their combat look like anything other than a computer-generated slurry. The composition and editing is bad, to where none of the action flows or reliably delivers the high octane thrills necessary to make up for the other shortcomings. And the big dust-ups and blockbuster battles don’t veer enough toward realism to feel thrilling or toward impressionism enough to feel cool. The big clock tower scene at the end in particular comes off jumbled and hacked together, and puts the cherry on top of this mudpie.
At least the film kinda sorta has something on its mind. Narratively, the big thing that separates Venom, Eddie, and Eddie’s underserved ex-girlfriend Anne on the one hand, and Carnage, Cassidy, and Shriek on the other, is that the good guys are on the same page, while the bad guys are riddled with discord. Eddie and Venom work together to save Anne at any cost, while Cassidy and Carnage butt heads over Shriek, leading to their doom. Like most of the film, it’s all trite as hell, delivered with heavy-handed dialogue, and otherwise realized with thudding bombast. But by god, it’s something.
The same goes for the movie’s exploration of Eddie and Venom’s relationship. *Let There Be Carnage* depicts them as a dysfunctional couple who need to work through their issues because they’re each at their best together. It’s a clever tack, one that leads to the movie’s most amusing interludes as the two bicker and dicker, and has something interesting, if odd, to say about this unique sort of partnership.
That said, even when the movie has its heart in the right place, the execution is off and off-putting. If you take the movie at its apparent intention to show Eddie and Venom as a sort of couple, it’s hard to root for them to reunite in the third act when the second act begins with a physical confrontation between them. What seems to be meant as an amusing scuffle instead comes off like physical abuse on both sides, with petty actions that suggest they’re better off apart.
Likewise, *Let There Be Carnage*’s effort to acknowledge the first movie’s queer fanbase during Venom’s solo sojourn to an all-welcome rave seems well-meant. But Venom’s minorly-layered, overly vague speech about acceptance seems like more of a mealy-mouthed dose of appropriation than any sort of full-throated embrace of that corner of the fanbase.
Otherwise, there are no surprises in this movie. The things it did well before, it still offers. The things it did badly before, it still does badly. To the extent this sequel wisely chose to double down on the weird-but-compelling dynamic between Eddie and Venom that was the best part of the first film, it’s counterbalanced by the advent of Cassidy/Carnage and whatever the hell’s going on with both of them. The few semi-new things the movie attempts are unavailing on the whole, and outside of a nice win for romantic rival Dan, all of the other characters are a big waste.
In that, *Venom: Let There Be Carnage* meets expectations. There is more Venom and Eddie banter. There is Carnage and carnage. There is the same fleetingly compelling but otherwise desultory/immature vibe that pervaded the last movie. The film delivers what it promises. Unfortunately, what it promises still isn’t very good.
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