Venom Movie Review: A Poisonously Dull Spider-Man Spin Off

They say superhero movies have a disregard for the laws of physics, but Venom has a disregard for the laws of human behaviour. In any given scene, its characters are prone to making such shoddy decisions that they barely resemble real people at all. Would you, for example, willingly allow an alien symbiote that looks like a sentient booger to latch itself onto you?

Venom tries too hard to be edgy, but ends up feeling rather flat – like a Marvel Cinematic Universe rip-off complete with the same villain tropes and intermittent humour. It’s a classic example of a film’s tone being drastically altered after poor test screenings – by now we’ve seen this happen way too often to not spot the tell-tale signs, the most obvious of which is Hardy’s unhinged performance.

Understandably, the film’s first half is heavy on the horror – an alien eats several human heads, after all – but if only the movie had the self-awareness to know that it’s simply wasting its time with all the bloodless gore. If only it knew that beneath all the ickiness, it is a comedy at heart. Perhaps that is why they hired Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer to direct the film in the first place, which suggests that at least initially there was a somewhat clear vision of where to take this thing.

Eyes. Lungs. Pancreas. Choose your snack of choice at a theater near you starting tonight. #Venom pic.twitter.com/lUNyVSuzaO

— Venom Movie (@VenomMovie) October 4, 2018

It’s baffling that even in this era of Logans and Deadpools, they didn’t have the courage to go all-out with a character that positively demands a film as bonkers as Hardy’s performance. But there you have it, in the end he’s the antidote to this poisonously mediocre film. Tom Hardy delivers a bravura one-man show in this poisonously drab Spider-Man spin-off which pales in comparison to its Marvel counterparts.