I watched Venom recently. It wasn’t very good but I did kind of like it, simply because it was the dumbest movie that I’ve seen in a long time. Once Venom bonds with Eddie Brock, the movie just completely changes in tone and becomes almost an (albeit abysmally preformed) action comedy reminiscent of old black humor action movies of old. I will say the interplay between Eddie and the Venom symbiote was actually really good and I could see the chemistry between them. There were some moments where Eddie Brock and Venom have actual genuinely funny lines that made me laugh out loud and then the rest of the movie only made me laugh because of how stupid it was.

There’s this part of the beginning of the movie where this Indian Elon Musk guy (he’s the main villain) is he’s talking to these kids and all the kids are standing around him he’s talking about how “one day we can live in space” and then one girl asks a question and all of the kids get annoyed after the fact and he’s looks at the students and goes “do not hush her. Let her ask her question” and he continues this speech about how people get their ideas silenced, but then after his little speech the girl never gets to ask a question and I was laughing so hard and it’s not a commentary on how he’s so self absorbed at all; they just didn’t really think about how they cut the scene and it felt like a mistake.

There’s also not really any character development in the movie anywhere. There’s one character that gets an arc but it’s one of the worst character arcs I’ve ever seen in my life. Eddie Brock has no personality; he just has a really thick American accent and walks around hunched over the whole movie for some reason, which made me assume that’s how Tom Hardy thinks Americans act. At start of the movie he’s kind of a jerk when he does one really horrible thing and he never really pays for that mistake. At one point Eddie Brock’s girlfriend even says “hey you were a jerk and you did something bad.” I didn’t really care and the movie doesn’t really care so it’s never addressed again and then we just see Venom fight bad guys for the next 50 minutes.

Another gripe I have with this movie is that the special-effects look dated and unrealistic. It felt like they shot an R rated movie and then cut out a bunch of scenes to make it PG-13. I think you see blood maybe two times in the whole movie and keep in mind, this is a movie about people who literally get their heads bitten off multiple times in the film. There’s a point in the movie where Venom bites a guy’s head off and then he walks away and you can see behind him that there is nobody there. I’m not really the kind a guy who needs blood and violence to make a movie worth it, but I think this movie would’ve definitely benefitted from an R rating and overall, if you just leaned into the silliness more, the movie would’ve been a lot better. But you get a feeling as if the directors were holding a lot back because it didn’t want to make Venom too goofy, but honestly the moments were Venom is funny and silly are the best parts of the movie.

I’m not alone in my negative view of the movie.

Fellow senior Nathan Wood even says “Venom was complete trash. It was a huge disappointment and I wish they could’ve done better. I would give it a three out of 10 and that’s me being generous.”

And I can’t help but agree with that statement. If you truly wish to watch an unremarkable utter waste of time, then Venom is the movie for you.