‘All I ever wanted in this circus of hell is carnage...’
The first Venom movie was badly received by both critics and audiences alike but was still a huge success at the box office. This inevitable sequel was an opportunity to take everything that was wrong with the first movie and use that as a guide to create something better. Instead, we have more of the same…
If Venom was the story of a man fighting with himself, Let There Be Carnage is very much the story of one monster fighting another. Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is still tortured. The creature living inside him is still making badly written and predictable jokes. Michelle Williams is still woefully underused as Brock’s love interest Anne Weying. But there is a new gelatinous blob stinking up the place. And this one is red!
Director Andy Serkis does at least lean into the silliness of the concept, a wise move considering the fact that this really is the daftest of all the Marvel/Sony properties. The big action sequences are still CGI heavy but they are at least visually innovative and coherent this time. Woody Harrelson returns as serial killer Cletus Kasady and it is him who becomes the host for Carnage, the latest Marvel big bad to arrive on the scene. Stephen Graham is a welcome addition to the cast as a beleaguered cop, and Harrelson does his best to sell the dark lunacy of his character, but the whole cast is fighting with a sub-Deadpool script that falls flat time and time again.
After Venom’s appearance in the (spoilers) Spider-Man: No Way Home post credits sequence, both this film and its predecessor now feel like stepping stones to something greater rather than movies in their own right, despite the admittedly impressive conclusion of this film. Miss it.