Monster munch
Cert 15
In cinemas now
★★★
Will Venom ever go back to his comic roots as a Spider-Man baddie? There are few signs of villainy in the surprisingly light-hearted second outing for Tom Hardy’s superstar reporter Eddie Brock and his ravenous alien “symbiote”.
I suspect this Spidey spin-off still has enough legs to keep running as a standalone (if rather unusual) superhero franchise.
Fresh from becoming a post-pandemic smash hit in the US, the odd couple return to UK cinemas with a much improved adventure that blends the monster movie with buddy comedy. When we catch up with the bickering duo, Brock has grown tired of sharing his body with the shouty alien who grants him superhuman strength.
The scary-looking creature, whom Hardy voices as an amped-up Brian Blessed, desperately wants them to form cinema’s latest crime-fighting duo, albeit with the occasional break to gorge on human brains.
But Brock has enough on his plate. His ex-girlfriend Anne (Michelle Williams) has just got engaged, his career is in tatters, and the half-eaten corpses strewn round his apartment after the 2018 original have attracted the unwanted attentions of Stephen Graham’s detective. Then he gets bitten by serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) during a death-row interview. Somehow, this spawns a rival monster inside Cletus called Carnage who helps the nutcase escape and reunite with his X-Men-like girlfriend Shriek (an underused Naomie Harris).
There’s a crushing familiarity to a climactic dust-up where the two CGI monsters knock digital lumps out of each other.
Thankfully, director Andy Serkis is on firmer ground with the knockabout sequences where Brock bickers with his inner monster.
The dialogue could be wittier but the crowd-pleasing quirkiness of this sequel makes Venom 3 a certainty.
It could be wittier but the quirkiness of this sequel makes Venom 3 a certainty