Starring Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed

Directed by Ruben Fleischer

Sony, out now

When reporter Eddie Brock snoops around the labs of the Life Organisation he is accidentally infected by an extraterrestrial symbiote and discovers that he can now wield super powers – just don’t call his new partner a parasite!

Judging by some of the dramatic reviews launched onto the internet this week you’d think that Ruben (Zombieland) Fleischer’s superhero/supervillain movie starring Tom Hardy is the worst comic book movie ever. It isn’t. Far from it. In fact, the most damning criticism I’d aim at this entertaining 1 hour 50 is that it’s incredibly generic and vanilla. Saddled with a ‘15’ certificate in the UK (it does feel more like a strong ‘12A’ considering what the BBFC usually allows) it will unfortunately lose the younger portion of the audience who would want to see Spider-Man’s nemesis in action, and might be more forgiving of its shortcomings.

Tom Hardy is great as Brock, fighting his (literal) inner demons and stumbling around like an addict going cold turkey. Michelle Williams (Oz the Great and Powerful) is his love interest Anne Weying, but the chemistry isn’t immediately apparent and she has little to do bar one killer scene. Even the excellent Riz Ahmed (Rogue One) can’t do a lot with the latest in a line of multimillionaire comic book psychos, Carlton Drake, and you wonder how long it will be before he shows his true colours.

Good use is made of the undulating San Francisco roads, though nowhere near as effectively as in Ant Man and the Wasp. The action scenes are fine (again, a little ‘I’ve seen this many times before’) as Drake’s army of weapons-rich mercenaries hunt down the renegade reporter. Ultimately, as with so many superhero movies, it ends with two CGI baddies smashing the beautifully-rendered pixels out of each other.

There’s a Stan Lee cameo and a mid-credits scene that’s so on the nose in its ‘please let us make a sequel’ pleading that I actually laughed aloud. That’s not so say the movie is lacking in humour elsewhere, as there’s some neat banter between Eddie and Venom as Jekyll tries to reason with his Hyde.

Verdict: Tom Harry’s Venom is great, but it doesn’t deserve its own standalone film and would be far better as a supporting role in a Spider-Man movie (though not the Raimi one!) Not awful, just inessential, and with little reason for a repeat viewing. 6/10

Nick Joy