Venom Movie Review - Not quite the Marvel we expected

Venom poster

Venom

U/A: Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed
Rating:

An anti-hero from the 'Marvel' comic-book universe gets a 'Superhero' makeover in this spanking new origin story with a clichéd plot, blobby effects, and messy action.

The screenplay by Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg, based on the Marvel comics by Todd McFarlane and David Michelinie, is particularly thin for a standalone movie. Alien Blobs are brought back to Earth by Scientists/Astronauts exploring the possibility of alien existence. Wicked scientist Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), with the help of Dr. Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate), try to find appropriate human hosts for these symbiotes -So the poor from the streets are picked up and readied as guinea pigs while curious crusading reporter Eddie Brock(Tom Hardy) infiltrates the facility and gets infected himself.

Watch the trailer here:

While the screenplay does try to engage us in the psychological conflict between host and alien, it is just a little spuriously superficial. There's no real explanation why these alien symbiotes find some human bodies better than others(many of the hosts die during the experiment). The first hour of the narrative has a slightly edgy feel to it - delineates the alien entry into earth and Drake's attempts to create a fab new chance of life for earthlings outside earth, while having Brock engineer his crusade around it. But that's as much science that we can be clear about here. The rest is all unlettered mumbo-jumbo stuff that feels too flaky to be reckoned as a scientific breakthrough. The action is pretty weird even if it's furious.

And the second hour which has much more of it gets all mottled and blotchy. The special effects are simply not up-to-the-mark. And the chief villain is so diminutively toonish that it's not funny. Riz Khan has neither the voice nor the presence to be a formidable foe. Tom Hardy though, does everything that he is famed for- giving the titular character more meat than is expected, in a largely puerile exploration of anti-hero mettle.

Also Read: Tom Hardy's Venom Does Not Have A Hero, Only Characters

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