Starring Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Naomie Harris, Michelle Williams, Reid Scott, Stephen Graham

Directed by Andy Serkis

Sony, out now

Why is convicted killer Cletus Kasady so interested in Eddie Brock?

With Andy Serkis directing, Let There Be Carnage is the second entry into the Venom series and part, at least so it seems, of Sony’s attempts to build a rival to the MCU with the licences they own (more on this later).

The first film was tonally uneven – getting in some excellent slapstick alongside a more earnest approach to the antagonist which left the story veering from humour to dark, corporate, shenanigans without much signposting. For my part I liked it but it’s very much a mid-list entry into the superhero genre.

Serkis and Hardy build a superbly enjoyable sequel which chooses one of the tones tackled in the first and doubles down on it. Fortunately, as far as I’m concerned, the tone they chose to double down on was the humour. This is no longer a big hero story but literally a movie about odd couples.

The film opens with Eddie Brock and Venom having their own little circle of people who know the nature of their relationship and, honestly, they’re well past the honeymoon period. They’re finding that neither of them are satisfied with the situation in which they’ve found themselves.

As with many odd couple movies they come to an end of this phase of their relationship and decide to see what the world’s like without the one they blame for holding them back.

What’s lovely here is that they circle one another and it’s when they’re too tight into each other’s orbit that it doesn’t work. Yet when they leave one another behind they discover they’re far from those they love and, despite some things being better, they are bereft without the person they love.

Make no mistake here – Venom and Eddie are in love and it’s learning what that means beyond the first flush of excitement which is this movie’s jam. How does one maintain just the right intimacy with a loved one without it being cloying and suffocating? How does one have enough space to remain oneself without that space alienating and shutting out our partners?

The film is concerned with both these questions and around it is a short, tightly scripted, story that drives them both apart and then brings them back together again.

There’s a lot here that’s underdeveloped – not least the nature of Carnage and what his relationship is to Venom. We get hints of it but it’s clear there’s a lot more here the movie could have explored.

It could also have fleshed out Frances Barrison, the one major female character in the film (Eddie’s ex is little more than a plot device unfortunately, who gets outshone by her even less substantial partner, Dan, at the end of the movie).

Frances’ story is the most interesting one in the entire movie. An innocent (as far as the movie tells us) who has mutant superpowers similar to that of Banshee in that she can create high powered sound waves (useful for disrupting the symbiote, natch). The thing is she’s kept in a run of the mill secret government facility with others, mistreated and then freed. The problem for me is that beyond this she’s a blank slate – happy to see people killed and to use her powers openly but we know literally nothing about her except she and Kletus Cassidy (Carnage) are in love and have been since they were teenagers.

Her lack of substance hollows out Kletus’ story, leaving him little more than a rampaging goosack whose only real purpose is to kill Venom.

Kletus himself, played like an outraged elephant with toothache by Woody Harrelson, is given something of a backstory but it’s delivered to us via literal letters and voice overs. Which is a shame because more time exploring his character could have built a deeper sense of who he was and why Eddie was important to him.

Nor is it explained why Carnage wants to kill Venom – beyond having daddy issues – and this is a bad thing.

So the movie does some things well – the relationship between Eddie and Venom, the tone, the action which is fun and visceral and, when it’s going, relentless if peculiarly bloodless for the rating it received.

It is fun, economical and short – all things to commend it.

Yet it does some things badly which left me glad it was short, because too much more and I would have been frowning at the screen and saying, ‘hang on a minute’. Its sloppy treatment of everyone but Venom and Eddie, its feeble female representation and its very slight world building are problems.

Let There Be Carnage is superior to the first movie. It benefits from a short, almost music video aesthetic and it made me laugh many times, yet it is far from perfect.

Ultimately, it’s a shame because instead of being a great movie this ended up being huge fun but quickly forgettable. Except for the post credit scene which may well be the most important one in all of Marvel’s movies. I’ll say no more here other than when the teaser at the end of the movie is the thing everyone is talking about that tells you a lot about how much impact the movie itself had on viewers.

Rating? 7 red ones out of 10.

Stewart Hotston