Photo Credit: venom.movie
Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage premiered Friday, October 1st, two weeks earlier than its original release date. The highly anticipated sequel to Venom revisits Eddie Brock trying to coexist with alien symbiote Venom. When serial killer Cletus Kasady also becomes a host to a symbiote, Carnage, it’s up to Venom and Eddie to stop him.
The hype surrounding the film seems to have contributed to its downfall. The film fell short for me in all the ways that mattered. The beginning felt a little confusing. The film threw you into Kasady’s backstory before revisiting Brock and Venom. However, once we got back to them, it gave a glimpse of what I’d hoped the movie would be. Venom and Brock’s banter was part of what made the first movie enjoyable and we did not get nearly enough of that in Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
Cletus Kasady’s origin story was slow and at no point did it feel worth the build up. We get a lot of background information about Kasady when he requests that Eddie Brock be the person to interview him after years in prison. During this interview, Venom figures out where Kasady’s mass grave is and it results in him being put on death row. Brock returns to have a final interview with Kasady. Kasady bites Brock when Venom can’t control his anger. The mix of Brock’s blood and Venom creates Carnage and Kasady becomes his host. Despite this, it still felt like Kasady was the true villain of the film.
Carnage barely had any lines that veered outside expressing his desire to kill. At no point did he feel like a fully fleshed out character. His role in the film felt overshadowed and more like he was an extension of Kasady rather than his own being. As fans, we can’t even hope to see more of Carnage because he was killed off by the end of the film.
At its core the plot was good and the movie, had it not missed the mark, could have been an incredible follow up to the first film. Some parts like Brock and Venom going their separate ways were dragged out completely. Other than that, it was all very cut and dry. The major fight scene at the end was anticlimactic and felt too short. It never allowed the viewer to feel any sort of suspense or worry that Brock and Venom wouldn’t win.
One bright point was the post-credit scene and it is arguably the best part of the movie. Venom and Eddie Brock are introduced into the Marvel’s multiverse and this links them to the highly anticipated Spiderman: No Way Home. A short ending scene saved the film for me. It let me glaze over my feelings of disappointment and be excited to see the two characters return in Spiderman.
