In the most recent installment of the Venom movie series, we see Eddie Brock’s Venom square off against a deranged lethal foe, Cledus Cassidy’s Carnage!
This won’t be your average ‘let’s talk about every single spoiler and every plot point that happened’ review. It just so happens to be my shortened general thoughts about the movie and the good and the bad of it. This is all just personal opinion, so feel free to disagree with anything I say, good or bad. (Don’t @ me. 😉)
Overall, I thought the movie was fun, frightening, and a good follow-up to the first. If you enjoyed the first movie, you will definitely like this one. It has all the fun and humor of the first movie, while at the same time expanding the Venom-verse into what Sony eventually wants it to be.
The movie only had about a 90-minute run-time. So, in the days of 2.5 – 3 hour movies, this movie definitely felt shortened to me. However, I’m not necessarily saying this was a bad thing. While some of the story felt a bit rushed, the movie did get across the message it was trying to convey. Cledus becomes obsessed with Eddie – Things happen – Ba da bing ba da boom – Let there be Carnage! As you could probably guess, the movie all culminates in the big showdown between Venom and Carnage.
Woody Harrelson portrayed Cledus Cassidy as almost a passive Serial Killer, where I wished he would’ve been more outwardly crazy with the evil laughs and menacing voice as he was in comics and the famous 90s cartoon. With that said, he did do a great job otherwise.
The visual effects were highly entertaining. Carnage looked amazing and had the comic book look almost down to a tee. Shriek was also another character introduced in the movie. Naomie Harris did a wonderful job portraying her. Her character development was a bit rushed as well, in my opinion, but she was necessary to the plot of the movie and I really hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of her.
All in all, the movie was great. It left us with a cliffhanger at the end of the movie to set up the next installment as well as another HUGE cliffhanger during the end credits that will add a lot of stakes to this universe, expanding things even more.
If you’re a major Venom/Carnage fan, I would highly recommend seeing it. Just don’t set your expectations too high. Enjoy it for what it is. If you are a passive fan, you will probably like it as well. For me, I’ll give 3.5/5 stars. Fun, exciting, and most of all world-building. I would definitely call this movie EFNcool. I’m excited to see what Venom and this universe (and maybe other universes, too?!) have to offer moving forward!
In line with this, I also played Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage for the Super Nintendo and reviewed it here. A lot of the characters in this movie also show up in that game as well.
Until Next Time!
Mason M.
EFNCool
(Images via Sony)
