Kidzworld took in Venom, a sci-fi actioner featuring another super being from the Marvel Universe. Does Tom Hardy give Venom’s alter ego Eddie Brock the right warped charm? Read our movie review.
By: Lynn Barker
In Venom, on-camera reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) asks the tough questions that get to the truth. When he asks bigtime industrialist/Lex Luthor type Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) some touchy questions about his unethical practices, he is fired and, since Eddie secretly got some of his insider info by looking into girlfriend Anne (Michelle Williams’) computer notes, she is also fired and dumps him. One of Drake’s projects is trying to “merge” alien symbiotic organisms brought back to Earth on one of his spaceships, with human beings. When one escapes Drake’s labs and “enters” Eddie’s body, more than the truth will come out.
Eddie digs for the factsCourtesy of Sony Pictures
They Came From Outer Space
A spaceship belonging to Carlton Drake’s Life Foundation has been exploring habitable planets and is bringing back four symbiotic lifeforms but the ship crashes and one of the symbiotes escapes by inhabiting the body of a paramedic. The others are taken to the Foundation labs in San Francisco. Drake is obsessed with bonding the symbiotes with humans so that this new race can live on other worlds when Mankind totally wrecks this one. Reporter Eddie Brock is fired when he asks Drake touchy questions in an interview and his girlfriend Anne, who works for the Foundation, dumps him when he steals info from her.
Eddie and AnneCourtesy of Sony Pictures
Feeling Useless
Drake continues his experiments. When a symbiote is able to live a while in a rabbit, he jumps ahead with human trials on vagrants despite objections from employee Dr. Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate). Meanwhile, feeling useless, Eddie, drinks and wishes he had Anne, who has moved on with a hot doctor, back. Hating the way Drake is killing helpless people, Dr. Skirth finds Eddie and offers to take him to the lab to see for himself and write a story. He goes. He sees and takes pictures but a symbiote gets inside him and he runs away noticing he is suddenly very, very fast and agile.
Dr. Skirth and Drake in the labCourtesy of Sony Pictures
The Voice Inside
Eddie, at home, gets sick, can’t eat anything normal and a huge voice from inside calls him by name and demands food! He goes to Anne who is at a restaurant with her doc boyfriend and tries to show her the pictures he took but the “thing” inside keeps trying to find living food and ends up eating a bunch of live lobsters. The doc takes Eddie for an MRI at a hospital where it’s learned that Eddie has some kind of parasite that is destroying his organs and he is also very sensitive to certain sounds. When Dr. Skirth is forced to tell Drake that Eddie houses the escaped symbiote, he lets one kill her. At home, Drake’s goon squad attacks Eddie and symbiote Venom comes out of him partially and destroys them all. Freaked, Eddie gets on his motorcycle with Drake’s drones and goons on his trail. After a wild chase during which Venom guides and protects him, Eddie gets the truth. The symbiotes are using humans as “rides” Cooperate or die.
Eddie has to escape Drake's menCourtesy of Sony Pictures
Leaving a Note and Into the Woods
Eddie/Venom, climbs up his ex-office building and leaves his photos and notes on what Drake is up to on his ex-boss’s desk. Finally, as he leaves the building, cops see and shoot at him. He decks them easily. Anne sees him as Venom and is freaked but recovers taking him to the hospital to get help. Meanwhile, another of the symbiotes inhabits Drake. Venom exits Eddie at the hospital and ends up in a dog. Anne sees the dog and figures it out. Eddie goes to Drake who reveals his wacko plan. He then turns into an even more powerful symbiote entity called Riot and sends Eddie with thugs into the woods to be killed.
Anne and her doc want to help EddieCourtesy of Sony Pictures
To the Rescue and the Big Fight
Venom, now inhabiting Anne, saves Eddie, kisses him and goes back into him. Riot and Venom/Eddie have a big fight to stop Riot from flying into space in one of Drake’s ships to bring back an army of the symbiote lifeforms. Venom likes it here, likes Eddie and wants to stay but he is losing the battle when Anne comes to help by broadcasting a high-pitched sound around the compound. The ship blows up with Riot on it but Venom has left Eddie’s body. Can they reunite? If so, can they be a force for good? Will Eddie and Anne get back together?
In a mid-credits scene, Eddie prepares to interview incarcerated serial killer Cletus Kasady who is also known as the creature called Carnage.
VenomCourtesy of Sony Pictures
Wrapping Up
Venom is at least somewhat entertaining due to some fun verbal humor and Tom Hardy’s nice performance as a downtrodden reporter with a good heart as well as a human dealing with a body-snatcher-like parasite in his innards. Bad guys are all cardboard characters with no depth and the deep Venom voice is more funny than threatening.
Venom threatens a bad guyCourtesy of Sony Pictures
Basically, the film can’t make up its mind on a tone. Venom, as a nemesis to Spider-Man in the comics, was way less tame and more frightening but he is more of a hell-raising cartoonish entity here. To live up to the grisly mayhem caused by the comic book character, the film should probably have been rated “R”. It is short so we suspect much was edited out. Venom and his fellow symbiotes rip off and eat people’s heads but we don’t see any details of this.
A frightening VenomCourtesy of Sony Pictures
There are plot holes galore. Is anything ever done with the information that Venom/Eddie leaves on his ex-boss’s desk? Venom briefly enters girlfriend Anne creating one sexy symbiote and this was promising but it goes nowhere. At one point Eddie convinces his other half to only eat bad people. Those fans of the more threatening Venom in the comics might not get into this still dangerous but humorous version. We go three stars.
Venmon Movie Rating: 
Courtesy of Sony Pictures
See Venom in theaters now!
Tell Us What You Think
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