Ruben Fleischer’s new movie, Venom, starring Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, was a below average movie that came off as rushed and not well thought out. While the movie did have its good moments that gave it potential, it fails in some areas, including the story, the character development, and the event build up. Although the movie lacked in those areas, the comedy and action were good enough to justify seeing the movie.Tom Hardy’s performance was also very well done and a fun watch.

The story of Venom in summary is about Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist, who is sent to do an interview with Carlton Drake the leader of the life foundation about the crash of a returning spacecraft from their company. Eddie, being the investigator he is, digs up information on how the company has been doing experiments on the homeless that lead to death. With that information, he changed the topic of the interview leading to the loss of his career and the loss of his fiance Anne Weying played by Michelle Williams. The movie then skips six months and has one of the scientist of the life foundation named Dora Skirth who helps Eddie break into the company. He then gets infected with the symbiote Venom and the movie starts to pick up speed. With Venom and Eddie now one, the life foundation begins to hunt them and eventually they team up to stop them from bringing more symbiotes to earth for testing. All of this is happening while one of the symbiotes from the spacecraft makes its way from China back to the life foundation headquarters where it would have been if it just stayed on the ship instead of escaping. The travel of the last symbiote in the movie also was extremely unnecessary and served no purpose. While this could have been an “ok” plot with more details, it felt like the movie just jumped from one event to the next without any good transitions or anything to build up to them.

Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock was amazingly done. He did a good job of conveying the feeling of insanity and fear that one would feel after hearing voices in their head, and once he finally meets Venom, the back and forth between the two felt enjoyable. The rest of the cast’s acting was good despite their very generic and poorly written roles. Carlton Drake was a generic corporate head that didn’t care for those below him and was obsessed with evolution. Anne Weying, the love interest, didn’t feel like she had any form of chemistry with Eddie Brock. Whether this is due to the casting choice or a poor script could be argued. Dora Skirth was nothing more than a plot device, but felt like she should have been more important. Fleischer could have done a lot better with the characters but seeing as the protagonist of the story was so well done I think this can be almost looked over.

Other than a lack of a real story and the generic characters, the action and comedy was amazing. The effects used to create Venom looked great; the fight scenes felt intense. The comedy was well done and really fit Venom as a character. Overall, I would recommend watching the movie if you’re looking for action and comedy, but if you’re looking for something that has a well thought out story, then Venom may not be the movie for you. I would give Venom a solid 6/10.