
I only know Venom from the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon even though I read a lot of Marvel comics, Spiderman was never in my favourites to read. I was an X-men girl. And I need to admit I only wanted to see the sequel because of this little scene in the trailer. Ketchup?!
But before I could watch the sequel I needed to watch the first movie which aired in 2018. Disney+, Prime or Dutch Netflix didn’t have it on their streams so I had to rent it through Google for €3,99. I wasn’t going fork over €10,99, no love for Venom from me haha.
Venom (2018)
Basically Venom is a symbiotic lifeform for outerspace brought to Earth by environmentalist Jeff Bezos who thinks it’s okay to find a host for these aliens by experimenting on homeless people and anyone else that doesn’t agree with his plans, in order to be able to survive in space. It is mentioned that he is scouting for space real-estate (the same guy that gives a speech that humans are destroying the Earth).
Our misfit investigative journalist Eddie Brock has beef with this guy and with the help of a rogue scientist breaks into the lab to collect evidence to bring the evil hipster down. When collecting the evidence, Eddie accidentally infects himself with one of the symbionts and all hell breaks lose. The parasite makes himself known to his host as Venom and is very hungry. After biting a guy’s head off it is known that Venom can only live on life food, especially brains. Hipster Bezos also gets infected by an symbiont and they duke out on a launching platform because the Bezos symbiont wants to go into space to retrieve his buddies so they can feast on Earth. Eddie and Venom put a stop to it by blowing up the rocket as fire and high frequencies are the only things that can hurt them. Everyone is safe, Venom is only allowed to eat bad guys and there was much rejoicing. The End.
The first movie was entertaining but not great. Venom and Eddie interactions are funny. Eddy’s fiancée got over him too quickly when his actions made her lose her job. And hipster Bezos was heavily overacting, it didn’t feel natural at all. I won’t blame the actor as the director is the one that okays a performance. So saving grace of this movie was Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock. And it also introduces us the bad guy of the second movie, Cletus Kasady played by Woody Harrelson.

Venom Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Eddie’s relationship with Venom is complicated. Biting of heads of baddies does attract police attention because you can’t play your own judge so Venom is condemned to eating chickes or chocolate because eating humans is bad.
Serial killer Cletus Kasady wants Eddie to tell his story but Venom observes frantic carvings in Cletus’ cell and together they discover the location of his victims landing Cletus a one way ticket to Hell aka death penalty. Cletus is mad that he is misunderstood because people did him wrong and demands that he talks to Eddie one last time before execution. The talk goes wrong when Cletus insults Eddie’s ex-fiancée and they end up fighting. Cletus then bites Eddie and somehow ingests a newly born symbiont named Carnage. The execution is botched and Cletus/Carnage bust out of prison to get revenge. Now Eddie and Venom need to work together to stop this nutcase.
Again the movie was okayish, I liked the Venom/Eddie escapades with Venom being a bit of a whiney bish and Eddie trying to keep it together with his maneating amoeba. I really like Sonny and Cher, Venom’s pets. So Tom hardy gets another thumbs up from me.
Now the downpart of the movie. I think Woody Harrelson is a good actor when you look at True Detective, Zombieland and Now You See Me but when he plays a psycho he is downright cringy. I DID NOT LIKE Natural Born Killers at all and he went for Natural Born Killers 2.0 for this movie. I mean Cletus’ had a fucked up youth with abuse but what’s with the trope that then he becomes this sadistic serial killer. Serial killers are more complex then boohoo I was abused by daddy now I am going to murder people.
I would still recommend this movie because besides the cringe it has entertainment value. Tom Hardy portrayed Eddie in a different light then the cartoon Eddie Brock ( I hated that ass) and you can’t help but feel sorry for the characters’ terrible luck. Please stay seated for the end-credits because it has an awesome reveal showing that this won’t be the last we see of Venom and Eddie.
My rating: