VENOM is a disaster for hard core fans of the character and even some casual fans of the namesake characters. The big problem is the character deserves an origin story involving Spider-Man which we don't get in this movie. The biggest problem of this movie is I was already thinking of a better plot within the first 20 minutes of this train wreck. Tom Hardy is OK as Eddie Brock, but it doesn't rank up there with his best roles as an actor. This is what I would describe as below average Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams seems wasted as a character of Eddie's ex-girlfriend who gets caught up in Eddie's new life when he bonds with an alien symbiote called Venom.

VENOM opens up with a space plane (from the Life Foundation) that is bringing back four symbiotic life forms and one gets loose which causes the space plane to crash in Malaysia. The Life Foundation is able to retrieve three of the symbiotes, but one escapes and begins a body hopping spree (in true horror movie fashion). Meanwhile, Eddie Brock is a video blogger reporter (the Eddie Brock Report) in San Francisco. He has moved away from New York after some bad incident at the Daily Globe. He is poorly chosen to interview Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), CEO of the Life Foundation. Eddie does another poor decision and decides to look at confidential documents on his girlfriend's Annie's computer (because Annie (Michele Williams) is a lawyer who helps represent the Life Foundation). Eddie's interview doesn't go as his boss wanted and Eddie ends up being fired from his job (and he loses Annie who is also fired from her job that leads her kicking Eddie to the curb). Six months pass and Eddie is one step ahead of debt collectors when he is approached by Life Foundation scientist Dora Skirth. Skirth helps Eddie sneak into the Life Foundation which causes Eddie to discover homeless people are being used as test subjects. Eddie lets loose a homeless woman he knows and soon Eddie is infected with the Venom symbiote. Soon Eddie finds himself a target of Drake and his goons as they want the symbiote back.

VENOM plays like a badly scripted sci-fi horror B movie and it has its moments (and some that comes from the Venom comics), but the scriptwriters make too many compromises in their attempts to strip the Venom character of the Spider-Man origins. The special effects are OK, but the initial box office returns of $200 million show we make unfortunately get a sequel (and hopefully they recast Woody Harrelson).

This review is (c)10-8-2018 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com and look for additional content at http://enterlinemedia.tumblr.com