Score: 1.5 / 5
What happened? Venom and Let There Be Carnage were so delightfully wacky and weird and fun that we had no reason to expect less from what is presumably the final installment in this series. And for the non-discerning viewer, this could just as easily be another entry in a lengthier franchise, one that is hardly notable, frequently forgettable, and generally uninspired, but still a fun time in the brief moments it allows its cutesy buddy/antihero dynamics to breathe and cause mayhem. Unfortunately, director and writer Kelly Marcel -- and, surely, due to no small interference from the studio -- completely misses the mark on this entry, ending the series on a pitifully pathetic note.
Tom Hardy is never less than his best self, and the film works best when it allows him to create weirdness. Hardy's delivery of Eddie Brock this time is a bit melancholic and world-weary, but his playfulness shines through as both the human and the titular symbiote. But Marcel rarely allows him to just do his thing in this film, pushing him relentlessly through plot points so contrived you have to wonder if the storyboard was generated by AI. Essentially, Brock/Venom, on the run in Mexico after the events in the previous film, decide to go to New York City, which just seems about as smart and safe a choice as any. En route, they are attacked by a monstrous symbiote predator, which Venom reveals to be due to his having resurrected Brock in the first film. Their special bond is thus called a Codex, and the symbiote creator Knull wants it. Why? How does he know about it? It's all a bunch of weird sci-fi jargon and fantasy nonsense, but the MacGuffin of it remains exactly that.
So they find their way through Las Vegas to a soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51, beneath which a secret government operation is studying other symbiotes, under the leadership of Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple). Don't get excited by these new cast members; they are utterly wasted in this film. Similarly, Rhys Ifans as a hippie who picks up a hitchhiking Brock and takes him there gets a few nice moments but is generally underused in what could have been a really cool character role. The characters aren't helped by a directorial (or producorial) determination to spend as much time as possible on action, a choice that renders most of the film unwatchable due to aggressively banal blobs of CGI alien goo dripping and flinging around like antigrav watery sludge.
The film seems to be the end of the road for Eddie Brock and Venom, and the film's climax (SPOILER ALERT) suggests that Venom's sacrifice is indeed final. Several other symbiotes are released, including one that bonds with Temple's character, and more of that could be fun to explore in the future. Because, rest assured, there will be more. The film has not one but two post-credits scenes, one which implies Knull (Andy Serkis) coming to Earth as a Big Bad Guy now that Venom is out of the picture, the other implying that Venom may in fact have survived the inferno at Area 51. It's all much ado about... nothing, really.
At least we got a bit more of Cristo Fernandez and much more of hilarious, heartwarming Peggy Lu in this one. It's just too bad Marcel couldn't keep her eyes on the good things she had at her disposal, choosing instead to dispose of them in this trashy mess of a movie that would have done better to not have been made at all.
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