On the other hand, its sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, is not fine. It’s dire. It’s nearly unwatchable. Its only saving grace is that it’s only ninety minutes long, and you will want to run to the nearest comic book to cleanse your palate.
Possessed by the man-eating alien symbiote Venom, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) has found himself the only reporter to whom serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) will make his confessions. Kasady’s time on death row is short-lived, though, once he too becomes infected with a symbiote that transforms him into the murderous Carnage. While Carnage scampers off to free his equally homicidal lover Shriek (Naomie Harris), Eddie must mend his fractured relationship with Venom before San Francisco burns.
Somehow, at 97 minutes, Let There Be Carnage still feels like it’s too long. The plot meanders and dithers until Kasady becomes Carnage, as though we need ample exposition to make us believe that Woody Harrelson is playing a crazy person. Between his manic eyes and the insane red wig he was sporting in the previous film’s mid-credits scene (a bonkers creative decision that is, alas, ignored in this film), I don’t think we need to wait more than thirty minutes before Kasady transforms into Carnage, especially when the film is already this brief. The showdown between these two characters, which ought to be a hallmark feature of the film, is limited to the climactic third-act setpiece. Compare to the comics, which made Carnage the star of a 14-issue crossover series, “Maximum Carnage.” For a villain this iconic, with a performer as significant as Harrelson, it seems almost a waste not to use him more.
The film is, like its twin protagonist and antagonist, bifurcated between identities. On the one hand, it is a superhero sequel in which the stakes are raised with a high-profile villain from the comics. On the other hand, Let There Be Carnage may as well be a CGI remake of The Odd Couple, in which Tom Hardy is forced to share an apartment with his own gooey anthropomorphized voice. You might charitably view this as a satirical riff on the standard sequel, in which the superhero wrestles with his chosen path and contemplates abandoning the heroic path (cf., Spider-Man 2). But it’s hard to be charitable to a movie in which Tom Hardy is keeping live chickens in his apartment to stop himself from cannibalizing muggers and hobos. At every turn, there are glimmers of a less deranged film, but time after time Venom takes the manic path. If you’re a filmgoer who likes the volume at eleven, though, perhaps Let There Be Carnage is the Venom for you.
Throughout Let There Be Carnage, one thing is abundantly clear – everyone who made the film was clearly having a ball, serving up plate after plate of ham. Indeed, some of this fun must have come from the fact that, yes, the studio let them make a movie so unhinged, so eccentric. It’s the sort of blank check creative recklessness that comes with recouping eight times your budget, but the first film was already abundantly nutty; Let There Be Carnage is like giving cotton candy to a caffeinated toddler at a theme park’s last call. And I’m sure there are moviegoers for whom this is the perfect flavor of superhero movie, madcap and ludicrous. To them I say, God bless. I look at this film, having forgotten what I actually liked about the first Venom, and I realize that Let There Be Carnage is simply not on my wavelength. It is difficult even to recognize it as residing on the same planet as I do.
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