“Im sorry about Venom,” a character says in the new superhero-ish movie, Venom. Its a howler of a line, but you know what? Im surprisingly not sorry about Venom, which is just stupid enough to be fun without being a waste of time. Directed with a happy smirk by Ruben Fleischer, the film takes alien body horror and suffuses (infects) it with a superhero origin story—its essentially Spider-Mans beginnings, but with a grotesque adult kind of puberty instead of Peter Parkers teen changes. Venom, or the man who becomes him, is ravenously hungry, has strange new urges, and gets real awkward around the woman he likes. He also bites peoples heads off, in the quite literal sense.
Whats happened to Eddie Brock, hot-shot investigative TV journalist turned out-of-work mess, is that hes come in contact with an alien life form called a Symbiote. Extracted from a comet by a mad and murderous scientist, the Symbiote is a gooey and elastic mass of material that needs an Earth-dwelling host to survive—and, yes, to thrive. Enter Eddie, on some sort of redemptive investigative mission, and the two become fast frenemies, sharing a body and a consciousness and, eventually, a sense of purpose.
Venom is a Marvel creation, first appearing as merely an alternate costume for Spider-Man but gradually evolving into his own snarky, iconoclast anti-hero, around the time that such characters were becoming de rigueur in comics. Hes only a little older than Deadpool, but unlike that tiresome rogue, Venom has a bit of true old-fashioned camp about him. Hes catty and high-drama, as his bonding with Eddie moves past Oscar and Felix stuff almost to a place of romance. I like the theatrical flair Venom brings to the table. It feels honest.
Both human and host are played by Tom Hardy, an actor who might be an actual chameleon. That would make as much sense as any other explanation at this point. Hardy is a strange and ever-shifting talent. Pinning him down is like trying to . . . well, its like trying to catch a big slobbery maniac that can reshape itself to adapt to any sticky situation. Which is all to say Hardy is the perfect guy for this role, and he turns in a vivid, sweaty, human-suit-on-the-fritz performance. His accent is all over the place, and you fear for his physical well being at times. I suppose that tracks; hes got an alien entity wriggling around inside him, after all. The character, I mean. Hardy the actor doesnt have some otherworldly being tugging on his brain. At least, I dont think so.
Trying to keep up with all that are Michelle Williams as Eddies alarmed ex-fiancé Anne and Riz Ahmed as Carlton Drake, a Bay Area industrialist determined to save humanity even if he must kill everyone to do it. Williams actually gets some funny stuff to play, rare for her kind of character in this kind of movie, and she commits herself ably. I wish Ahmed leaned a little more into the megalomaniacal E—n M–k of it all, but he still hits some satisfyingly goofy notes throughout.
If only he and Hardy had some more screen time together—because its a hoot watching every other actor try to figure out what to do with Hardy as he thrashes, particularly in a madcap scene in a fancy restaurant. Williams and the dependably game Reid Scott look on in giddy horror as Hardy tears around the place, chomping on food, eyes bulging, talking a mile a minute. Fleischer films Eddie/Venoms violent transformations with whirligig verve, the camera careening as Hardy wrestles with his inner demon-clown.
Where Venom loses its energy is, predictably, in the requisite big action sequences, which are cluttered and incoherent and sapped of stakes. When a movies creature is capable of infinite permutations and upgrades—Venom can turn his limbs into knives and axes and hammers and all other kinds of instruments of death—the creature tends to drown in all that unstoppable possibility. We also miss Hardy when hes disappeared inside the goo. No computer graphics, sleek as they may be, can compete with a human actor working at such breakneck full-throttle.
For several weird stretches, though, Venom is a bouncy good time. The movie doesnt seem to care if youre laughing with it, at it, or whatever. Just as long as youre engaged, rollicking along as it doles out fan-service while still making a gleeful hash of so many serious franchise movies about very silly things. Venom is, blessedly, not as self-referential as Deadpool; theres a winning earnestness to its offbeat comedy, as if Fleischer and crew bore witness to Hardys itchy daring early on in production and formed a deep if wary reverence for it. True faith cant help but be sincere, and so Venom, for all of its winking, seems genuinely in awe of its monster, too.
As it should be! The movie doesnt need the sequel it so nakedly sets up in a post-credits sequence, because I suspect the amusing shock of Hardys performance wont be nearly as effective a second time around. But as a one-off, a dopey but amiable movie watched with an agreeable audience, Venom does an unexpectedly successful job. Would that more of these movies were possessed of such freewheeling spirit. Maybe some studio execs should dispatch an array of filmmakers to outer space, in search of other comets brimming with the pleasingly icky stuff of new and exuberant life.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Full ScreenPhotos:Behind the Scenes of Vanity Fairs Exclusive Marvel Cover ShootRichard LawsonRichard Lawson is the chief critic for Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theatre. He lives in New York City.
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