Venom: The Last Dance: Movie Review

Cast: Tom Hardy , Peggy Lu , Stephen Graham , Cristo Fernández , Juno Temple , Alanna Ubach , Rhys Ifans , Chiwetel Ejiofor

Director: Kelly Marcel

The final outing for the Eddie Brock/ smart-mouthed alien symbiote relationship is frankly a mess, saved barely by Hardy's willingness to debase himself in service of an appallingly lacking script.

Picking up after the mid-credits sequence from Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie's still in Mexico reflecting on life after and doing very little. But when he's accused of murder and an alien overlord named Knull decides to end all the symbiotes in the world (why? We're never really told by a script that's less interested in polishing edges), both Eddie and Venom go on the run.

And that's really it for plot - there are subplots about Area 51 being decommissioned because there are no such things as aliens, a hippy family led by Rhys Ifans making one last trip to Roswell because reasons, and a series of seemingly indestructible alien creatures stalking Brock.

It's nothing short of a cinematic shambles, a film that descends into a pixel-heavy, cheap-looking CGI smashfest that does nothing except squander the surprisingly good elements the prior films have connected together.

It's frustrating too - because there are moments between Venom and Eddie that hint at a depth their partnership has hit and a mournful regret over how life has turned out. But none of it is really given emotional heft in a script that barely papers over any edges that jarringly show.

Hardy is amusing, looking weary at his life's outlook and mocking some of the perceptions of him. Yet the script doesn't know what it wants to do - action scenes are choppy, editing sloppy and any depth that would come from consequences is frittered away by a series of comments from Venom to undercut anything that would stand alone. (Although Venom horse, Venom frog and Venom fish give welcome fleeting moments of levity).

A bromance montage scene shows the tongue-in-cheek elements at play here, but despite the incessant bicker-banter between the two, thanks to the cheap CGI elements of the Xenophage alien creatures and a villain who never really appears to offer much threat, it feels wasted in extremis.

In a final scene, Venom says to Hardy's Brock "It's only bye for now." But based on what's transpired over the last 110 minutes, you can't help but hope this is a permanent farewell for a character and story that deserved so much better.