Venom

“Eyes! Lungs! Pancreas! So many snacks, so little time!”

Filmology Rating: 2 out of 4

Look everyone, it's another movie to start arguing about! This one stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, your average reporter who gets attached with the parasite, Venom.

After the screening I was actually shocked at how much of a mess this film was. I'm not sure whether or not the film was self aware about itself, but this film was all over the place with its tone, pacing, and characters. One major issue is the tone because it prevented me from getting into the first act because it felt that the film was rushing to the next scene and never took its time. The editor wanted to get to the Venom stuff. But the pacing is really bad and feels very disjointed; almost like a series of scenes with no narrative thrust because once Venom gets into Eddie Brock, things just sort of happen and I didn't know Venom's motivation at all.

And in the third act, Venom makes a decision to change who he is and it completely comes out of nowhere with no motivation whatsoever other than some off-handed comment the screenwriter tossed in.

The film's tone is a mess as well. Ruben Fleischer, the director, stated that the PG-13 rating was inspired by The Dark Knight. After watching the movie, that is such a joke. This film is nowhere near the tone of The Dark Knight, in fact, this film is actually a comedy. It was not marketed as that, so I blame Sony and I feel very conned. Had I known this was a comedy, I may have been more accepting of it, but the movie is played really dramatic and serious until Eddie and Venom merge, then it becomes a stupid comedy where I never laughed. I actually laughed at the movie due to how incompetent it was at times. That humorous tone ruined something that could have been good.

I'm not dissing comedy as a genre, but this film took the easy way out and made a comedy instead of a darker piece that would have been R (which takes a lot more craft from the filmmaker). I did like Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, though, without him this movie would have been worse. Tom Hardy plays off himself incredibly well. It had a dumb third act too, but I did not hate the film. It was mildly interesting.

Rating: Skip It

-Nolan