Venom: The Last Dance – Film Review
After six years, Tom Hardy‘s Venom trilogy finally concludes with Venom: The Last Dance, which is on par with the previous two films.
Following on from the events of 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, former journalist Eddie Brock (Hardy) and his alien symbiote Venom are fugitives on the run. They are being hunted by federal agents as well as a team running a symbiote lab and an ugly creature sent to kill Venom in order to free his caged master.
I re-read my review of Let There Be Carnage and I feel exactly the same way about The Last Dance. Just like its predecessor, this threequel works best when it’s essentially a buddy comedy about two entities co-existing in the same body. They bicker like an old married couple and their conversations are hilarious. I laughed out loud constantly (more than the people around me) because I found Venom genuinely funny this time – he is given some brilliant lines that Hardy delivers in that unique voice. There was also a running shoe gag that tickled me.
Hardy is once again brilliant in the dual roles. He is acting against nothing and having conversations with himself and he makes it look effortless. His line deliveries as Venom are brilliant.
Unfortunately, the film fails in every other regard. The plot is a mess and I didn’t care about it, the writing is poor (outside of Venom’s one-liners) and filled with clunky expositional dialogue, the CGI is bad and the action sequences are visually messy and difficult to follow. The film didn’t need all that – I was happiest watching Venom sing David Bowie’s Space Oddity with a family of hippies.
Also, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Juno Temple are wasted as Rex Strickland and Dr. Teddy Payne, a soldier and scientist working in the secret symbiote facility. Ejiofor feels miscast while Dr. Payne is given a traumatic backstory that is so overused it becomes ineffective. Don’t even get me started on Stephen Graham, who is given virtually nothing to do.
Fans of the franchise will likely enjoy the third instalment because it is very much the same as what came before. It also wraps up Eddie and Venom’s storyline in a meaningful way. Let’s hope the conclusion truly is the end!
In cinemas from Friday 25th October