When talking with people about Venom, most of them call it “a turd in the wind” a quote from the movie.
But is the film really that terrible?
Well, no… but it is still bad.
Venom never gets terrible, however, it does get pretty cringe-worthy at times and the pacing and tone really takes the film’s potential and throws it away.
Directed by Ruben Fleischer, the Venom stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, a washed up journalist who, after trying to get dirt on CEO of the Life Foundation Carlton Drake, played by Rhiz Ahmed, ends up with the symbiote Venom taking control of his body.
This results in Drake trying to retrieve his “property” and Eddie and Venom having to work together to survive.
For what is worth, the film does start off pretty promising with great set-up for the symbiotes and Eddie’s backstory.
However, the problems of the film quickly become apparent with its tone and pacing.
The film sporadically changes from a comedic film to a horrifying film.
These two tones do not mix well at all and the jokes can get pretty cringe inducing.
One of these “jokes” provides probably the most uncomfortable kissing scene I have ever seen put to film.
But I will admit, even though the comedy sections do not work at all, the horror sections are actually done well and do a good job at creeping you out.
The real thing that brings this film down is its pacing issues.
Scenes go by way too fast, making it very hard to get any emotion out of them.
There were numerous instances where I saw a chance for an emotional moment only the scene went by so fast I did not feel anything.
It felt like scenes with certain characters should have been cut all together to make these scenes go longer.
Chief among these characters is Drake, who is the most boring and cliche villain since Steppenwolf from Justice League.
I will say though that some of the actions scenes, excluding the ending one, and the interactions between Venom and Eddie are good.
However, this is once again brought down by the pacing because, although their interactions were fun, Venom and Eddie’s friendship progresses way too fast and I never bought Venom’s reasoning for helping Eddie.
The thing that drove the nail in the coffin for deciding this was a bad movie and not an average one was the ending action sequence.
This was an absolute mess of a scene with horrible CGI and direction, resulting in me not being able to tell what was going on.
All of this is a real shame because I can definitely see the potential Venom has.
It starts off strong, the interactions between Venom and Eddie are fun and some of the action scenes are enjoyable.
However, numerous things like the pacing, tonal inconsistencies, terrible villain and ending action sequence drag this down.
At the end of the day Venom is a bad film but not the worst thing I have seen this year.
THE REVIEW MONSTER 