Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: Venom
December 16, 2018
Venom - Buy from Amazon: DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack
Venom is the biggest hit Sony released this year. However, it was absolutely savaged by critics. Were the critics right? Did the audiences see some quality critics didn’t? Or is the movie somewhere in the middle of those two extremes?
The movie begins at Life Foundation mission control as their spaceship returns to Earth with important samples. Something goes terribly wrong and the spaceships crashes in Malaysia. The CEO, Carlton Drake, is more concerned with the samples than with the astronauts. They were able to recover three of the four samples... and miraculously, one of the astronauts survived. You don’t get bonus points for guessing this astronaut is infected by missing sample. This “sample” wakes up in the back of the ambulance, commandeers one of the EMTs, and leaves with a Life Foundation logo. We see the symbiote again throughout the movie as it makes its way to San Francisco.
We then look into the life of Eddie Brock and his fiancée, Anne Weying. She’s a lawyer and has a big day in court, dealing with a lawsuit against Life Foundation; she's work for the law firm defending the foundation. Meanwhile, Eddie’s main duty for the day is apparently feeding the cat. More accurately, he’s an investigative reporter working in San Francisco for the MNBN TV station. He has a big meeting with his boss who tells him they have an exclusive interview with Carlton Drake. However, it’s a problem, it’s supposed to be a puff piece to help the public regain trust in Drake’s space program, but Eddie hates the guy. Eddie thinks Drake’s a crook and more than a little off.
That night, after Eddie and Anne’s date night, he gets out of bed for a midnight snack, only to hear her laptop getting a message. He starts to snoop around and sees some of Anne’s legal papers that she was sent. These discuss human experimentation Life Foundation had conducted. When he’s interviewing Carlton Drake, Eddie just can’t help but bring up these experiments. This might seem like something any investigative journalist would do, except it is highly illegal to read these confidential papers. Doing so gets him and Anne fired and as a result, Anne rightfully breaks up with him.
Six months later, Carlton Drake and Dr. Dora Skirth are performing experiments one of the life forms brought back by the spaceship. It can’t survive in an oxygen rich environment, so it needs to bond with a host. However, this kills the host. ... Usually. We witness the first success. One of the lifeforms bonds with a rabbit without killing it and Carlton Drake immediately wants to move to human trials. Dr. Skirth is obviously put off by this leap, for moral and ethical reasons. Carlton Drake insists, even going so far as to make thinly veiled threats against Dr. Skirth’s kids. The first human trial ends in horrific tragedy, but Drake just asks for another “volunteer”.
Meanwhile, Eddie Brock is unemployed and unemployable. He leaves the bar when Drake is on the news and heads out into streets. He talks a bit with a homeless woman, Maria and gives her $20. His day isn’t made better when he witnesses his friend get the shakedown for protection money. The next day, the plot finally catches up to him when he catches Dr. Skirth following him. She wants Eddie to help her expose the Life Foundation, but Eddie has no interest is saving humanity anymore. To top off this day, Eddie decides to walk over to Anne’s house, because confronting your ex is always a smart thing to do. When she makes it clear they are never getting back together (She already has a new boyfriend.), Eddie is left with a sense of nothing to lose, so he decides to help Dr. Skirth.
Dr. Skirth sneaks Eddie into Life Foundation’s facility and explains what we’ve been told so far, but when a guard shows up, Dr. Skirth hides Eddie in one of the containment labs. He’s just supposed to hide there till she can get back, but he’s an investigative journalists and pokes around. While doing this, he sees Maria in one of the containment cells. She asks him to free her, which he does, only to have Maria immediately attack Eddie and the symbiote transfers into Eddie. With the alarms going, Eddie panics and runs away. He would have been caught by the guards, but he’s able to jump faster and kick open the door to get away.
When he gets home, he’s panicking even more, which only gets worse when the symbiote talks to him.
We are about 40 minutes into the movie and we are finally getting to the heart of the plot, but we are also getting to spoiler territory, so we will end the plot summary here.
This movie is a mess. There are elements that work, including and especially Tom Hardy’s performance as Eddie Brock. Without him, this movie would be completely unwatchable. His energy matches the manic tone of the film. They should have leaned heavier into those elements and less on the action scenes, because, for the most part, they don’t work. (There’s a motorcycle chase with exploding drones that is really just so, so bad. It’s not engaging and the acting is ... Even Tom Hardy can’t save this.) Furthermore, the film is just boring when it tries to take itself too seriously, and it takes itself too seriously far too often.
A serious body horror film would have needed to be a hard R. When they made the decision to go PG-13, they should have emphasized the buddy comedy elements between Eddie Brock and Venom. Also, let Riz Ahmed go total ham playing Carlton Drake and make Dr. Dora Skirth into the one trying to help Eddie and Venom work more effectively as a team. More Jenny Slate would improve most movies.
The extras begin with Venom Mode, which is a pop-up trivia track, but it takes too long to get going and there's not enough trivia here. There are five minutes of deleted / extended scenes. The first of several featurettes is From Symbiote to Screen, which is a 20-minute look at the character and how it changed from the comic to the movie. The Anti-Hero is a 10-minute look at Venom and how he differs from most super heroes. The Lethal Protector in Action is a 9-minute making of featurette that focuses on the action scenes. Venom Vision is a seven-minute featurette on the director, Ruben Fleischer. Designing Venom is a 6-minute look at the design of Venom. Symbiote Secrets is three minutes of Easter Eggs. There are 14 minutes of scenes with pre-vis, which are basically animated storyboards. Finally, there’s two music videos.
Venom is a bad movie. In some ways it is so bad it is entertaining. It is like watching a train wreck from the safety of your own home. The buddy comedy elements work so well that I can see the potential for a good movie, but it is overshadowed by poorly executed action scenes and a too serious attitude. If you like bad movies, then give this one a rental. If you saw the movie and liked it, then the DVD / Blu-ray / 4K Ultra HD has enough extras to make it worth picking up.
Video on Demand (Movie Only)
Video on Demand (With Bonus Features)
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The Movie
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Venom, Ruben Fleischer, Tom Hardy, Melora Walters, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Jenny Slate, Reid Scott, Ron Cephas Jones, Peggy Lu, Michelle Lee