Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is attempting to get his life back on track by interviewing and writing about serial killer Cletus Kassidy (Woody Harrelson) whilst setting some boundaries for Venom around his dietary habits. Unfortunately thanks to an encounter where he gets a little too close to Kassidy the symbiote Carnage is born. A red alien that truly lives up to its name. 

Back in my review of 2018’s Venom I described the film as “schizophrenic” and something that “aspires to be an interesting mess”. Perhaps unsurprisingly my notes for this film are almost identical even if I think I liked this mess a little more. 

Tom Hardy clearly loves the character and gets a ‘story by’ credit here alongside writer Kelly Marcel who also wrote the first film. Hardy is having an absolute blast in the first hour in which he does a large amount of slapstick comedy and a bickering odd couple double act with himself. This time the films comedic tone clashes less with the rest of the film even if the juxtaposition to the incredibly loud carnage of the antagonists actions is still a little off. 

In a very short run time for a comic book movie (97 minutes) it also packs in quite a lot of comic lore. A new villain and anti-hero are introduced in Naomie Harris’ Shriek and Stephen Graham’s Detective Mulligan whilst references to Ravencroft Institute and the Lethal Protector will please Spider-Man comics fans. 

The returning characters from the original all have a little bit of fun as well. Michelle Williams has more to do this time as Brock’s love interest whilst Reid Scott and Peggy Lu also have some fun with their characters. Where the characters are underserved this time is in the villains. Harrelson is fine as the gleeful psychopath Kassidy but hardly gets any time to shine whilst Harris barely registers in her small screen time. It does not help that their flashback to their childhood friendship suffers from some terrible voice dubbing. 

The biggest missteps are an on the nose masquerade ball segment about accepting who you are and the action sequences. Which again fall into the bracket of incredibly loud CGI messes. I am not sure how the film makers would resolve that final issue given the lead character can only be fulfilled by computer animation but they must be able to come up with something a little more interesting? 

Ultimately I think Venom succeeds in what it is trying to do. It’s just that I do not find it particularly interesting. 

Hang around for a mid credits sequence that is truly interesting in terms of Venom’s future.