Tom Hardy and superhero movies feel like a natural fit. He played a strangely-accented Bane in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises, and had a narrow escape from playing Suicide Squad's Rick Flag, but he's only finally taking the lead in Sony's Spider-Man spin-off Venom.
It was always a strange prospect – a solo movie about a Spider-Man villain that doesn't star Spider-Man – but could Hardy work his magic and kickstart a superhero franchise for Sony Pictures while he does it?
The answer is decidedly no, although the mishmash that is Venom is not completely without its (incredibly weird) charms.
Hardy is Eddie Brock, a plucky reporter living in San Francisco with his fiancée Anne Weying and his wholly unnecessary (but, seeing as this is Tom Hardy, inevitable) New Yoik accent. When his newest assignment goes seriously wrong, Eddie's life falls spectacularly to pieces.
Meanwhile, shady young genius scientist/CEO Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) has orchestrated the arrival of mysterious alien entities on Earth. The creatures bond with living hosts, and Drake's human trials leave a trail of corpses in his wake. These events converge, with Eddie finding himself as the unwilling host of the alien symbiote.
We should say 'eventually', because it takes a long time for things to really get going and for Venom to appear in the black, gooey flesh. At that point, what plodded along as a dour science-fiction thriller switches to an odd mix of horror and buddy comedy. But even that can't stick, switching between serious, head-devouring action and silly comedy at whiplash speed. The tone of this movie is all over the place, and it's the inconsistencies rather than the absence of Tom Holland in a starring role that are Venom's real problem.
Director Ruben Fleischer has assembled a strong cast, but the material can't do them justice. Hardy comes off best, and seems to be having fun – although his growling, ostensibly monstrous Venom turns out to be far more likeable than Eddie, who flip-flops between heroic journalist and cringing wimp.
Poor, talented Michelle Williams is given the thankless task of the film's resident girlfriend. Anne is a lawyer, allegedly, but her chief role is to grope for any sort of chemistry with Hardy, an ultimately doomed endeavour. At one point she says to Eddie, "I'm sorry about Venom" – it's meant to be in sympathy, but could just as easily be directed to the audience, or herself.
As for Ahmed – another skilled actor – his main role is to speechify nonsensically and leave us wondering why anyone would follow this lunatic down the path of shady experiments and outright murdering people with impunity. He does not inspire confidence.
Venom's plot is riddled with clichés, from Carlton's moustache-twirling to Eddie's every predictable move, and repeatedly abandons story elements. The script is painfully basic, at times resorting – like an old comic book that explains in words what is clearly happening on the page – to just telling us exactly what we've just seen.
When Venom says that Eddie has no secrets from him and then asks basic questions about his life in the same breath, we can't help but suspect someone was asleep at the keyboard.
When Venom takes control of Eddie's body, there's some fun to be had with the unwilling-participant-in-a-deadly-fight schtick, but unfortunately it was done with much more style, finesse and humour in another 2018 movie, Upgrade (which ironically stars Hardy lookalike Logan Marshall-Green). And the latter movie was not saddled with Venom's ugly, unconvincing CGI.
The tragedy of Venom is that there are not infrequent flashes of a better film beneath. Inconsistent characterisation aside (is the alien a ruthless killer or Eddie's ally?), the interplay between the symbiote and its host is sometimes incredibly funny, delivering some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. But the movie refuses to choose a tone and stick to it, flip-flopping instead from serious to silly throughout. Had Fleischer committed to the horror-comedy elements of his film, Venom might have been a solidly enjoyable superhero flick.
Venom is far from the worst superhero movie we've seen, and at its best is – at times – a fun ride. But in a world where Marvel Studios rules the roost, its sloppiness isn't going to slide.
Director: Ruben Fleischer; Starring: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed; Running time: 112 minutes; Certificate: 15
Venom is out now in the UK and will be released in the US on October 5. Book tickets here.
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