Venom: Let There Be Carnage review – sloppy sequel just isn’t any fun

There is a fine line between good trash and bad trash. The 2018 Venom movie was a critical bomb, but found success with audiences because, in spite of its flaws, it was surprisingly entertaining, hinged on a demented, bizarre performance from its leading man. Good trash, then. But sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage, in its attempt to replicate the strange appeal of the original, can't tap into whatever accident made it watchable.

Tom Hardy returns to the role of Eddie Brock, unconvincingly a journalist, and who now also fully inhabits the symbiotic alien parasite Venom (also voiced by Hardy). Through some convoluted backstory, serial killer Cletus Kasady (a surprisingly dull Woody Harrelson) is infected with an angrier symbiote off-cut and transformed into the psychopathic monster Carnage. He escapes in pursuit of an old flame, Shriek (a miscast Naomie Harris), who possesses powers of her own, and the pair team up to kill Venom for reasons that are never all that clear or compelling.

But why no fun? Venom shoots for levity, but it rarely entertains. How is it that Ridley Scott’s medieval #MeToo thriller The Last Duel (also currently in cinemas, and highly recommended) is way more fun than this movie, despite its serious and timely message? Kelly Marcel's inelegant screenplay is all over the place, while the dialogue – much of it presumably improvised by Hardy – is godawful (the banter between Eddie and Venom is cringeworthy). Under the guidance of director Andy Serkis, the whole thing just feels sloppy and cheap, with poor editing and little care or innovation in the staging of CGI action sequences.

Thankfully, it’s all over quickly enough (97 minutes!), but the result feels entirely disposable – like something witnessed on a Venom theme park ride spin-off that we all accept has no real bearing on the wider canon. And a mid-credits sequence setting up a new crossover lands with a nauseating thud of inevitability. Bad trash, this.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is now showing in UK cinemas.