VENOM: THE LAST DANCE (2024)

I dunno how I ended up in front of this one. Possibly because VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE was actually pretty funny, with some fun scene-chewing by Woody Harrelson that almost felt like he was sending up his own Mickey Knox from twenty years earlier. That film was directed with comedic energy by Andy Serkis and written by Kelly Marcel. She returns here as writer and director.

It lacks the commitment to comedy of the previous, and it’s too flimsy a vehicle to carry off the sombre tone it’s reaching for. They give it a a go, though, even as it dissolves into the usual third-act CGI final-battle chaos. Stephen Graham turns up for a few scenes and seems even more out of place and confused as to the reason for his attendance than normal. Chiwetel Ejiofor shows up and only shows a flash of the actor he is because that’s really all that’s required of his generic part. It’s a tight ninety minutes, and it wants to be efficient while Marcel and Hardy have one final play with the superhero-movie toys. And I give them credit for wanting to shift the tone and give the film a sadder end-of-the-line feeling.

The few jokes tend to be fleeting and visual – in a chase scene, Venom possesses a horse, then a fish, then a frog. That sort of thing.

I note here that this film cost around 110 million and made almost 500 mil gross. Marcel will get her next film made.

With this, Marcel has done a thing I’ve seen other writers do: simply prove they can efficiently direct a movie without running the whole production into a wall. I imagine Marcel and Tom Hardy, who developed the story with her and has used her as a script doctor on a few of his other films, will do something else together. And that might be worth watching.

VENOM: THE LAST DANCE is out on home media next month: (UK) (US+)