Venom 2: Carnage or Garbage?

I’d like to start this review off by saying that Venom isn’t some cinematic masterpiece, and you’re doing both yourself and the movie a disservice if you go into it expecting that. What you should expect from the movie however is a fun action movie with its fair share of low brow humor. In my opinion, the movie has great high points, but it also has some clear low points throughout the 1 hour 37 minute run time.

In terms of what the movie does well, we can take a look at the humor and the action. While the humor may be considered crude in some aspects, I would say that’s par for the course when it comes to Marvel properties these days. In addition, I believe the action in this movie to be pretty great, although I feel that it is held back by two things: it’s CGI and it’s rating.

This leads me to my next point, I believe the movie is severely held back by it’s PG-13 rating. Oftentimes the movie attempts to make jokes that are supposed to come off as vulgar or low brow, but it feels like it’s being restricted by the fact that it’s not an R-rated movie. This would allow for greater creative freedom for the comedy, and allow the abrasive, vulgar, and rude creature that is Venom to hit that much harder.

Another problem I found with the movie is that it seemed to have somewhat poor pacing, as at times it felt like they spent too much time on certain aspects of the characters’ backstories, but at other times it seemed as if they spent no time at all on them. As a final note, I believe Venom 2 is a good movie with some issues, but if you can move past that it’s definitely worth the watch (especially the post-credit scene).