Venom (2018) (blu-ray film review).

  Tom Hardy really was an inspired choice for the lead role of this particular Marvel franchise. The main character, Eddie Brock, has the full gambit of emotions in this the 2018 film ‘Venom’ that launched the series. This provides plenty of material for Hardy to work with.

  Eddie Brock starts by losing literally everything; his job, his fiancée and his self-esteem. He seems set on a downward spiral of despair and despondency with no way back. Being an investigative journalist, Brock is a naturally nosy person who reads about trials of a human-alien symbiosis being conducted by the bio-engineering corporation Life Foundation. Unfortunately, the source of the information is Brocks fiancée, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), who happens to be an attorney who’s preparing a defence for Life Foundation in a lawsuit.

  When Brock is asked to interview Life Foundation CEO Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) for a corporate publicity event he quickly changes the subject to confront Drake about the human trials. This is the incident that triggers Brocks downfall as he loses his job and his fiancée dumps him.

  In case you are wondering where the symbionts come from, it’s a comet approaching Earth. A probe belonging to Life Foundation discovers it and attempts to return four symbionts back to Earth for further analysis. Of course, things don’t go to plan and the probe crashes back on earth. One of the creatures escapes but the other three are transferred back to Life Foundations laboratory.

  Six months later, one of Life Foundation’s researchers Dr. Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate) isn’t happy with the human trials and contacts Brock who’s really down and out at this point. After breaking into the laboratory, one of the symbionts, called Venom, transfers itself into Brock’s body. Having the symbiont gives Brock tremendous powers but also an intelligent cohabitant of his mind and body.

  But what of the escaped symbiont from the original Life Enterprises probe that crashed? Well, its name is Riot and it eventually makes its way over to Life Enterprises offices where it binds with CEO Carlton Drake. Its no surprise, to me at least, that the symbionts on the asteroid have an evil plan to come to Earth and utilise all the human hosts they can find.

  After being in symbiosis with Brock, the Venom symbiont is convinced that the invasion plan needs to be stopped. The problem is that Riot is a much bigger and stronger entity than Venom. The obligatory big fight at the end of the movie appears to be one-sided and not in Venom’s favour.

  What impressed me about this film is its actually quite a good action movie. It does depend to a large extent on the CGI effects but these are done well. They blend in seamlessly with the real life action in such a fashion its almost believable. Particularly when Brock or bits of him morph into the Venom character. Perhaps I should add that I’m also a fan of Tom Hardy who I think plays the Eddie Brock character perfectly.

  Director Ruben Fleischer keeps things moving at quite a brisk pace from a screenplay written by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel. The plot isn’t particularly deep but that’s not what I’m looking for in this type of movie. What I am looking for is to be entertained and that’s what I got. In fact, I have watched the movie a few times now and even when I’ve had the family round. There was a good generational mix in the audience that afternoon but they said they enjoyed the film.

  This particular Blu-Ray disk has over an hour of additional content (Blu-ray exclusives it says) although not all of it is Venom related. The Eminem music video and the clip from ‘Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse’ are good examples of this. One thing I didn’t like was the font used on the back cover of the Blu-ray case for the credits. It’s tall and thin to the point where it’s almost unreadable. A minor annoyance but I do pay attention.

Andy Whitaker

April 2022

(pub: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Inc., 2022. Blu-ray UK-J4818-BD VFE37204)

cast: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed and Jenny Slate

check out website: www.sonypictures.com