Movie Review – Venom

Look – let’s get this out of the way now – Venom (2018) is not for everyone, mainly hardcore fans who expect strict adherence to canon and their own slavering fantasies of moviemaking prowess. If you fall into that group, stay home, read your comic and pretend this never happened. For everyone else, lemme tell you about Venom.

Eddie Brock is a very successful video blogger who does deep investigative reports uncovering all sorts of things important people don’t want uncovered. When he takes a step too far and torpedoes his own career his only way back is literally through the conspiracy that destroyed him. He accidentally becomes fused with an alien lifeforce on an interplanetary mission of its own. Together they fight two greater evils, eat bad guys and save the world in their own twisted way.

I’m not sure what you were expecting.

I liked it.

Yes, like most action movies with liquid aliens, there is a lot of CGI in Venom, but I didn’t care. This was fun for me, an introduction to a part of Marvel I’d only had a passing acquaintance with. No, I’m not a hardcore fan and frankly neither is your average viewer (which is probably you, am I right?) so go grab a matinee. Venom is evil corporations with megalomaniac billionaires, liquidy alien races who need just the right human, and a loser who can’t get out of his own way. Riz Ahmed plays Carlton Drake, an Elon Muskian philanthropic billionaire who uses his fame, money, and charisma to save the world by taking it apart from the bottom up. Michelle Williams plays Brocks ex-fiance who is unwilling to wait around to be saved. For a popcorn movie, everything just worked for me – and I’ve seen some heavy Oscar stuff this week. It was good to sit back and let the story and the action just play out. It’s an escapist fantasy and that’s what we need now – silly, ridiculous, escapist fantasy.

OH – stick around to for the standard Marvel cut credit scene that opens the door to the franchise, and then stick around longer for a fantastic sneak peak of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) featuring Miles Morales coming December 2018.

Venom (2018) is rated PG-13 for swears, big-eyed, slobbery aliens with lots of teeth, people getting their heads bitten off, bodies flying through the air, stuff on fire, rockets, explosions, and homeless people worn like floppy skin suits.