Venom: The Last Dance Review - Eddie and Venom stumble through last performance in rhythmless romp
The more you think about it the more Queen and Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’ fits within what Venom: The Last Dance is going for (Or at least part of it): It’s the terror of knowing what the world is about. Watching some good friends screaming let me out, as Venom and Eddie try to give love one more chance. As the film tells us this is their last dance, under pressure from world-threatening forces. However, this last dance is not euphoric, technical, or overly emotional, but rather the last dance of a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing where they just sway on the spot, barely moving, before being engulfed by a number of external parts making one homogenous mess.
The film opens with Knull, a stereotypical superhero villain. Sat on a throne in a dark room, his long white hair masking his face as he declares his plan. Sending a legion of CGI monsters to bring back the codex, which is in the possession of Venom, as he wants to create a prison for symbiotes who betrayed him. It is the sort of introduction that sets the plot into play, but also tells us what to expect, a paper-thin script, with a villain who you barely see and barely shows up for the rest of the movie. This is setting stakes just for stakes sake. It’s surface-level sugary nonsense.
Meanwhile, Venom and Eddie are hiding from police forces who want to question them for events from the previous film. Hardy is dressed in the mode of a middle-aged dad on holiday. With a Hawaiian shirt, crocs and slightly greying stubble with a beer belly to suit, he is a man who is living out the rest of his days. Meanwhile, the venom is aiming to reignite a spark in him. When they discover themselves on the news, they realise they need to escape, heading to the remote city of New York (yes you read that right). Thus, they head on a road trip where they reconcile for one last time. There are also a myriad of other needless plots: Juno Temple plays a lab scientist in Area 51 who lost her brother at a young age and has some sort of electrical power that she is hoping to unlock, working in a bunker that pays heavy homage to that of Jurassic Park. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a no-nonsense army head-honcho on the hunt to kill Eddie and capture Venom, whilst Rhys Ifans is a hippie dad taking his family camping whilst searching for aliens.
Unsurprisingly, then, this film ends up as a messy, slappy, bashy action film that has little to say, as Venom and Eddie say their goodbyes – at least for now. However, it isn’t without its fun with the bromance between Eddie and Venom being the film’s one saving grace to counter moments of random dialogue which make little to no sense. As well the film looks like an amateur made it. Full of GoPro footage, shaky and blurry shots and towards the end a grey homogeneous mess that was the genre trend about 10 years ago. The film is completely silly and doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and if you watch the film on those terms there is definitely some fun to be had, but there aren’t nearly enough of those moments to warrant your attention. Included in this are a mix of fun and out-of-place needle drops. Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ plays over an action scene of all of thirty seconds, which feels surface-level and poorly mixed but is nonetheless fun. There is a really funny moment with David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, but other more contemporary hits feel like they are placed in the film because they were popular on TikTok at some point during production.
What really keeps your attention in the film is the bromance between Eddie and Venom. The film would have been far more successful as a buddy road trip comedy with the pair cracking jokes with one another. But it feels as if the studio was probably unwilling to have that audacious of a choice, trying to nestle in different elements of lore and end-of-the-world stakes that overweigh what Hardy is doing in the film, which is keeping it together as somewhat of a watchable film.
However, the highlights of Eddie and Venom are barely able to keep their heads above the serge of dull dishwater in a paper-thin script with too many subplots and a bloated final act which extends itself to the point of insane boredom. The film is unable to utilise its time in the first couple of acts to create compelling characters, so the final act has little to no intrigue, with characters you barely recognise playing vital roles.
Venom: The Last Dance is a film desperately trying to be a buddy comedy between Eddie, the croc-wielding unemployed middle-aged man who has had one too many tequilas and Venom, the head-chomping symbiote ready for its next meal, but instead it is a film that limits these moments of interaction. For this reason, although the film is a lot of fun, it is hard to recommend. Particularly the third act struggles in its ability to conjure up an effective emotional capacity, through a failure to build up characters throughout the film. However, there is a cute, almost romantic sizzle reel at one point where the film shows what it really is. One final goodbye between the unlikeliest of best friends.