**Spoilers for Venom: Let There Be Carnage lie within.**
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a love story. Simple as that. It’s about a man and his one true love trying to figure out how their relationship can work, and if you go into this Andy Serkis-directed joy with that mentality, you’re going to have a fun time. Written by Kelly Marcel, the film is a heightened chaos from Venom and one that works for this outlandish story and the strange but intriguing performance that Tom Hardy brings to Eddie Brock.
The movie shows us the origin of the villain Carnage, connected to serial killer Cletus Kasady (played by Woody Harrelson), and I’ll say that the wildest thing this movie does is sell that Naomie Harris and Woody Harrelson are the same age. Playing Frances Louise Barrison a.k.a. Shriek, Harris and Harrelson are connected through their shared past at St. Estes, where Barrison is taken away from Cletus and it fuels his already existent murderous rage.
For those unaware, Cletus Kasady killed his granny and fried his mother before his father beat him and sent him to St. Estes. That only grew into Cletus Kasady being a serial killer who then wanted none other than Eddie Brock to tell his story. When Brock and Venom both figure out where all of Kasady’s bodies are hidden, it pushes the government into reversing their stance on the death penalty and streamlining Kasady to lethal injection.
All of this to say that Kasady wants to meet with Brock one last time, they fight, Kasady bites Eddie, and thus, Carnage is born because of Venom’s blood. All of this is just the basic plot of why Venom and Carnage have to fight each other, but the real crux of this movie comes from the love story.
Oh sorry, not between Shriek and Carnage. No, that’s bad and not something to be desired. I’m talking about Eddie and Venom.
That’s right. You thought that the first film was a romantic comedy? Well, this is the Spider-Man equivalent of a Nancy Meyers romance, and one that I want to see over and over again. Venom and Eddie have a dynamic that borders on aggressive with each other but comes from a place of love. Venom negs Eddie and calls him a loser despite being a “loser” from his own planet, and so on and so forth.
In Let There Be Carnage, their lovers’ spat turns to a break-up that could see them separated forever, until Venom goes to a rave and takes the mic to tell a crowd of people who much he loves Eddie, only for Eddie to beg Anne (Michelle Williams) to go and find Venom for him. The two are bonded together and, as such, have to take on Carnage and save everyone, including Anne, as one symbiotic being.
Sure, in theory, this movie is cheesy. Do I care? Absolutely not. It’s exactly what I expected and wanted out of the deranged relationship between Eddie and Venom and left me feeling like this is the only way to tell a story about Venom and Eddie Brock. Want it to be serious? Sorry, can’t be. The two of them communicate by Venom speaking telepathically and Eddie talking to himself walking around and saying things about murder and eating people just out loud with strangers listening.
The movie is a bit messy, but that’s just Venom. If it were a flawless and a beautiful film, I don’t think I would have liked it nearly as much as I loved this disaster, because that’s what I’ve come to expect from the Venom franchises, and I thank Andy Serkis, Kelly Marcel, and Tom Hardy for just embracing the mayhem that is Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
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