Review: Venom

Venom, much like its (anti)hero, is a movie of two parts. The first is a standard origin story made engaging by the relative novelty of seeing Tom Hardy at his most relaxed and loosey-goosey. The second half, once the story finally kicks in, is a showcase for visual effects that are as glorious as they are repellent.

Both a body horror comedy and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reimagined as a buddy movie, the film is Sony's attempt to create its own Marvel Universe. It's an inauspicious but somewhat savvy entry as the expected long game would be to have Venom collide with Spider-man at some point in the shared universe, though it may have been wiser to not have Venom in his own stand-alone since, based on this film, he's more designed as a piece to be introduced into a puzzle rather than an interesting one in his own right.

Before he experiences his own version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Hardy's Eddie Brock is a motorcycle-riding maverick San Francisco reporter engaged to the lovely district attorney, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams). Assigned to do a piece on billionaire tech magnate Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), he instead confronts Drake with allegations against the mogul's Life Foundation, specifically the human trials the corporation has been conducting. Eddie not only gets fired, he ends up losing Anne in the process since he gleaned the info from a document in her case files.

Six months later, still jobless and pining for Anne, who's since moved on with Dr. Dan Lewis (Reid Scott), Eddie is contacted by Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate), a scientist at the Life Foundation who's grown increasingly uneasy with Drake's unethical methods. Breaking into the lab to obtain photographic evidence, he unwittingly absorbs one of the symbiotes, a parasitic creature that needs an oxygen-breathing host to survive, into his system. Unlike the tests Drake has been running, Eddie and the symbiote are a perfect match, much to Eddie's horror as he attempts to figure out what's happened to him.

It's during this stretch that Venom genuinely becomes interesting as Eddie becomes a disbelieving witness to his own newfound powers. Hardy's panicked reactions are priceless as Venom takes over Eddie, whose body gets yanked hither and thither, limbs stretching and suddenly becoming deadly weapons. In quieter moments, the two form a darkly humorous bond as Eddie pleads with Venom to refrain from biting off everybody's heads and Venom gives Eddie relationship advice.

Watching Eddie and Venom work to find a balance would arguably be enjoyable enough to sustain the film, which definitely has its moments. One can sense that it's aiming for something different, but ultimately it lets itself down. Where a comparatively minor character like Ant-Man had at least colourful supporting characters like Michael Peña's lovable chatterbox Luis, Venom surrounds Eddie with bland and generic secondary players. Unlike Deadpool, Venom doesn't possess a surety of itself and doesn't quite have the quirk or imagination to avoid becoming a rote origin story.

Venom

Directed by: Ruben Fleischer

Written by: Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, Kelly Marcel; based on the character created by Todd McFarlane and David Michelinie

Starring: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, Jenny Slate, Reid Scott, Melora Walters, Ron Cephas Jones, Woody Harrelson