VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE
Bad Romance
RELEASED 3 JANUARY (download out now)
2021 | 15 | Blu-ray(4k/standard)/dvd/ download/ VOD
Director Andy Serkis
Cast Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Woody Harrelson
This sequel to 2018’s surprise supervillain hit is also – unexpectedly – one of this year’s funniest romcoms.
The first movie was choppy but enjoyable, thanks to the oddcouple dynamic between Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote Venom. In Let There Be Carnage, the pair are starting to feel the strain. They fight, they break up, Venom goes on a big night out
– but will they get back together in time to stop Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), a serial killer with his own evil symbiote?
Kelly Marcel’s screenplay has a genuine wit and Hardy’s performance is, once again, positively Nicolas Cage-ian in its intensity. Harrelson, for his part, goes even bigger as lethal lounge lizard Kasady, desperate to reunite with his own lost love. It’s a loud, baffling, deeply silly movie, but it’s also short, sweet and a huge amount of fun.
Extras A solid, if slightly bland, selection. The six deleted scenes (nine minutes) offer a few alternate and extended takes, including a longer ending. “Let There Be… Action” (seven minutes) is a brief
Making Of. A blooper reel provides three minutes of the actors standing around laughing while their swears are bleeped out.
The featurettes are more interesting. There are ones on Eddie/venom’s relationship, hidden Easter eggs, Harrelson’s performance as Kasady, the romance between Kasady and Shriek, and designing Carnage (total: 30 minutes). Finally, three scenes get compare and contrast pre-visualisations (nine minutes). Plus, confusingly: a trailer for the special features… but not one for the actual film. An Amazonexclusive steelbook adds four fan-art art cards. Will Salmon
The film is loosely inspired by the 14-issue Spider-man comic crossover arc “Maximum Carnage”, published in 1993.