Venom Review

"VENOM! (i got dat) I'M WEARING DEN-DENIM! WE GON GO N GET EM! (random mumbling) ENDS WITH -ENOM! DEY AIN'T GON KNOW WHAT HIT EM!"

That's my interpretation of the Eminem song that played at the end of this cinematic masterpiece. Yeah, I can already see my future rap career blooming. Hit me up on Soundcloud to hear my fire beats.

So believe or not, this movie is the 6th highest grossing film of 2018 and may very likely stay that way. Before this film released, I was thinking "Am I the only one who thinks this looks like a complete dumpster fire?" But after its release, I thought, "Am I the only one who didn't see this movie?" The reactions I heard were varied. Some thought it was incredible. Some thought it was one of the worst movies of the year. I originally wasn't going to watch this movie, but lo! The people were so divided that I just had to watch and decide for myself: is this a masterpiece or an unmitigated disaster?

It's honestly neither.

It's not at all a good movie, but I've honestly seen worse this year. It was better than I expected..... but that's really not saying much at all. Part of me actually wishes the movie was worse than it actually turned out, thus the film would have even more "so-bad-it's-good" value than it already has. Because those golden moments in the film where it is complete and utter garbage is where Venom is the most entertaining.

There are some moments in this film that have me asking: "Was this supposed to be funny or serious?" Tom Hardy delivers a hilariously awkward performance as Eddie Brock, whose life is basically ruined until an alien named (gee, I wonder what) Venom undergoes symbiosis with him. It's near impossible to decipher what his character's emotions are, especially due to the fact that a vast portion of his dialogue is just weird grunts. I can't take his accent seriously either. I burst in laughter so many times when he was speaking. Sometimes he wasn't even saying anything funny and I laughed: I couldn't help it! Some other areas that were tonally confusing include that scene where Tom Hardy runs around a restaurant while eating peoples' food until he ultimately sits in a lobster tank. And then he proceeds to grab a lobster and eat it. If you don't believe me, see it for yourself:

You might've heard about this next scenario because it's truly baffling. I guess this next part is kind of a spoiler, so you might want to skip these next few sentences if you plan on watching the movie. Basically, Venom gets separated from Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy gets kidnapped and taken to a forest by the bad dudes. But when they are about to kill him, they all get annihilated by Tom Hardy's ex, who now has Venom in her system. Then, the disturbing-looking She-Venom grabs Tom Hardy and (😲) kisses this man right on the mouth in order to transfer Venom back into Tom Hardy. The weird thing is that whenever one of these people is in symbiote form, they are controlled by the symbiote. So technically, Venom made out with Tom Hardy, not his ex-girlfriend.

This last scene that I wanted to go over is one that anyone who's seen the trailer knows about. It's been memed to death at this point, but I have to mention it because it's just so weird and honestly the most tonally confusing scene in the whole movie. Part of me thinks Venom was cracking a joke when he said this, but another part of me thinks his character was making a legitimate comparison. In this scene, Venom grabs a guy who's robbing a convenience store and explain how he's going eat the robber. Venom proceed to tell the guy, who is now scared out of his mind, that he "will be this armless, legless, faceless thing rolling down the street...." (Plinker)

Then he eats the guy and Tom Hardy nonchalantly tells the clerk, "Oh yeah.... I have a parasite". Genius. And I will give the movie props for one thing in particular: it is funny when it's trying to be. At the very least, the screenwriters could come up with some decent jokes.

The main reason I wrote this review was to talk about those weird scenes. Just to reflect on what I witnessed in this peculiar motion picture. Nevertheless, I oughta fill you in about some other aspects of the film. First of all, the performances are terrible. I'm not even talking about Tom Hardy, because he was at least entertaining. But as for Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, and Jenny Slate (MONEY PWEASEEEEEEEE!!!!!)? Their characters were as flat as a plateau. Oh yeah, Woody Harrelson's in a mid-credits scene. He looks like this:

Don't even get me started about the dialogue; It's like a turd.... in the wind. I actually thought the action scenes were pretty fun. They were never boring, dull fights where some CGI monsters punch each other and do nothing else. Those scenes werein involved enough to keep me interested and sometimes distracted me from the needlessly convoluted plot. It feels like they bring up a new subplot like every 2 seconds. I don't even think they resolved all of them, and if the quality of this film is an indication, I'm pretty sure Venom 2 won't resolve them either. Just stick to 4 subplots and make sure you finish those arcs! Finally, the last thing I want to bring up is the special effect quality. It's pretty bad stuff. Pretty bad indeed. I can forgive it somewhat due to the budget being pretty modest for a superhero movie: $100 million. But when a movie like A Quiet Place cost like $20 million and has better effects, there might be a little problem. 

SCORE: 4/10

All-in-all, it's kind of a mixed bag. It's probably the worst Marvel movie since that horrendous Fantastic 4 movie from 2015, yet I enjoyed it significantly more than many of the DC movies that have been released.

WORKS CITED

Plinker, Jeff, et al. Venom. Performance by Tom Hardy, Sony Pictures Releasing, 2018.