Even if it did gross nearly half a billion dollars at the global box office, it’s still somewhat in vogue to consider the first Venom film, helmed by Zombieland and Gangster Squad filmmaker Ruben Fleischer, somewhat of a cult film or guilty pleasure. One can often forget how heavily that film was dunked on early in its life cycle, especially when the Vulgar Auteurists took over and began proclaiming its subtle (and not-so-very subtle) qualities. In truth, most of those dunks were anything but a Vince Carter poster-style classic and, when posed as questions, were easily answerable. What the hell is Tom Hardy doing here? Easy: doing a great slapstick performance and having a ball and a half doing so. Are they disrespecting the iconic character of Venom? Uh, no. What the fuck is there to respect anyway? Why isn’t this more like a typical Marvel movie? Well, that question has two answers. First, it’s a comedy, even though Fleischer has to conform to the mean at some point, and secondly/most importantly, because it’s doing something interesting, even if it’s not totally successful. It harkens back to the Blade years when entertaining all (especially adults!) was the most paramount concern for a franchise like this. And, much like Blade, its sequel, the Andy Serkis-directed Venom: Let There Be Carnage, doubles down on everything that made the first work while abandoning many of the things that drug it down.
These abandoned elements include any semblance of logic or reason, pretty much every single moment of non-Eddie/Venom character development, most minutes of quiet reflection, and its pretensions of drama. What you’re left with is 90 minutes of pure slapstick tomfoolery, cartoonish violence, and a slam-bang pace that feels like you’re watching a Looney Tunes short before the real feature begins. This is a very roundabout way of saying that Venom: Let There Be Carnage is an absolutely bug-nuts and batshit crazy time at the movies, and it comes with my highest recommendation. I remember an old Patton Oswalt quote about how the Crank movies worked: something about how, in that film, Statham (and by proxy, Neveldine/Taylor) would do anything to entertain you, so long as there is not one moment of time in which you are bored, and I feel like this is a good echo from far off in the distant cave of our MySpace blog past that resounds and clarifies exactly what makes Serkis’ film work so well. It doesn’t even really want you to like it, like the MCU movies so often do, as it gives critics those puppy-dog eyes and pleads with them “You know, you had enough of a good time, please give us some praise so we can get above 70% on Rotten Tomatoes and our producers can earn their quarterly bonuses,” but Serkis doesn’t give a shit if you’re laughing at it or with it. He just wants you to laugh.
I’m not going to spend a ton of time on the film’s plot, because, again, it doesn’t really matter, but Venom picks up shortly after where the first left off, with reporter Eddie Brock (Hardy) and the symbiote Venom (also Hardy) following up on that promised interview with Cleatus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), a serial killer who committed crimes so heinous that California did away with their death penalty ban just to kill this one motherfucker, who is trapped behind bars awaiting his date with a needle and a three-drug cocktail that will put his ass to sleep forever. Kasady’s got a sad story — he’s got a lady friend named Shriek (Naomie Harris) who is alive and trapped somewhere, and he just wants to get married and have a family and raise all sorts of hell along the way — and Eddie’s there to document it. Venom helps Eddie get a break in the case, and Kasady’s execution is pushed forward, and at what was supposed to be their last jailhouse meeting before his (scheduled) death, the killer provokes Eddie into attacking him. Kasady takes a big ol’ bite out of Eddie’s hand to end the attack, and as the reporter’s led out of the joint by a guard, the killer realizes that the man’s blood tastes… weird. Enter Carnage, the symbiote-spawn of Venom, who will kill anybody that stands in the way of his goal — killing his father — and who teams up with Kasady to find some sort of common ground that will achieve both of their goals.
Well, fuck, I guess I did go into the plot a lot, and I had good reasons for not wanting to. It’s not because I was particularly worried about spoiling something, it’s just that it doesn’t fucking matter what the plot is. What you’re here for is the straight-up insane kineticism of Serkis’ filmmaking, which takes plenty of inspiration from early Peter Jackson (as is appropriate): It never slows down, it never stops being gross as hell, and it always is searching for the next best action beat or joke. That isn’t to say that the movie is low-fi, though the effects kind of occasionally look it (Venom can often look like he’s from a PS2-era video game cutscene outside of his close-ups, given his bulky, weird design, which is even stranger given how much this movie cost), though it’s the kind of thing one simply learns to roll with. Carnage’s escape from and rampage through prison is one of the goofiest action sequences of the year, and it’s also deeply uncomfortable as well. Like Bad Taste or Dead Alive, this is a gross fucking movie — I’ve had the misfortune of already reading a headline of someone saying that it contains “porn tentacles” as if that were a bad thing in a bizarro PG-13 movie released by a major studio in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty One — and there are even some solid references to spew films as well when Venom jumps from host-to-host after having a fight with Eddie.
This brings us to the final reason why Venom: Let There Be Carnage kicks ass: It is the gayest superhero film to be released in cinemas since Batman and Robin. Sure, it is full of wonderous camp: The symbiote singing “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” while it makes Eddie a giant breakfast, the suit’s pair of pet chickens, Sonny and Cher, and an entire sequence in which, after said fight, Venom goes out and enjoys himself the San Francisco Halloween nightlife, clad in glowing rainbow necklaces, even saying, at one point, that the outing is his “coming out party.” Hardy, a pretty openly bisexual dude, co-wrote the screenplay, which, I guess, is perhaps the reason why: one could see this as a coming-out film or something, but I prefer to see it as an Odd Couple-styled comedy with a lot more explicit gay humor, especially since Eddie and Venom spend the entirety of the film at each other’s throats in the sassiest ways possible. Regardless, it is still a breath of fresh air to see a superhero movie — one co-signed by the safest possible studio working today, who ensure their products are a vacuum of sex lest they not alienate families or, perhaps, audiences overseas (one can only imagine the headache Kevin Feige will have with certain censors, as he begs them to give a call to Sony, not his office) — working with something interesting on a psychosexual level within their characters, and making it as fun as this. Again, it’s never boring.
So, if you’re looking for a course corrective on the Marvel side of the superhero ball, or are just looking to kick the Spooky Season off with a broad and goofy horror-comedy, Venom: Let There Be Carnage wants to see your dance card, sugar.