My God, they had no idea what they were making.
Before it came out, I had no interest in watching Venom. After its release, the movie began to get a second life and I started reading reviews.
Venom dropped on Netflix the other day - probably to get people interested ahead of the release of Let There Be Carnage - and I finally got to see what all the fuss was about.
Off the bat, Venom is a bad movie. The script is boilerplate, the characterisation is hard to grasp, and the movie looks like an incredibly generic blockbuster. What saves the movie is that all of these ‘missteps’ work in turning the movie into something way more interesting.
This movie is purely designed to be read against the grain - people have referred to Venom as a romance and I completely agree with them.
What is fascinating about the movie is how generic it is, and yet that lack of depth - enables obvious readings.
If Venom is not in love with Eddie, then this movie is terrible - because that is the only way the movie makes any sense.
The movie only starts to get going when the two main characters get together. Before that, the movie is a formulaic blockbuster without any real texture, emotion or atmosphere.
But once Eddie and Venom are combined, the movie gets personality.
Venom is so silly. Every time he talked, I laughed - it felt like a spin on Little Shop of Horrors, with Venom as Audrey Two to Eddie’s hapless Seymour.
Tom Hardy’s performance is on its own course. Initially it felt like a collection of tics - he has worked out a voice and posture, and he is sticking to it. But once he is possessed, Hardy’s performance is juiced to 11.
He even makes the cliched one-liners funny - not in the way the screenwriters intended, but Hardy’s delivery highlights their staleness, and pushes them over the line.
A success in spite of itself, Venom is a movie you cannot watch the way its makers intended.
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