In the Flesh: Venom (Patreon)

Venom has perhaps the most unearned face turn in all of film. One moment the titular symbiote (Tom Hardy) is snarling that Earth is going to be a game preserve for his people, and the next he’s telling Eddie Brock (Also Tom Hardy, sans CGI and vocal distortion) that sharing a body has changed his mind and maybe Earth isn’t so bad. Along the way there’s maybe a beat, a beat and a half during which these two characters develop any kind of connection. In one scene Venom scales a skyscraper and is surprised to enjoy the view. In another, Brock is wowed by Venom’s abilities during a car chase. Beyond that there isn’t much going on emotionally. Brock himself is a truly confusing turn by Hardy, a kind of hapless, squeaking schmuck with the broad shoulders and rough presence of, well, Tom Hardy. As the voice of Venom he’s more compelling, humorous and a little sultry, but the film appears not to trust in the actor’s ability to generate chemistry while literally talking to himself. The conversations between the two characters typically boil down to pat quips and the kind of Whedon-esque observational “comedy” that sucks all emotional plausibility out of whatever it touches.

Some of the action isn’t bad, though neither is it anything about which to write home, and the best of it is clearly straining against both ho-hum CGI and the Disney-mandated PG-13 rating. Watching the towering symbiote swing guys around and bite off heads can only go so far without blood or gore or broken bones to sell the impact of it. A better director might have found ways to work around the rating — sound effects, live stunt work — but Ruben Fleischer delivers his signature bland helping of visual ordure, phoning it in when he should be going at it hardest. His framing deserves particular disdain, with most shots awkwardly sandwiching characters between shelves or lab equipment or cutting them off just below the knee. Maryann Brandon and Alan Baumgarten’s editing, too, leaves a great deal to be desired, jokes and emotional moments both left floating in copious amounts of dead air in spite of what’s clearly meant to be a madcap pace. The whole thing feels undercooked, hinging on the appeal of the creature — its gooey roiling and oozing is far and away the film’s chief visual pleasure — and hampered by a script that doesn’t so much unfold as leadenly drop brick after brick into place to create something with the shape of a story and none of the connective tissue.

I deplore the picayune approach to film criticism, the joyless nitpicking of “plot holes” and other inconsistencies, but while these structural faults are easy enough to overlook when a film is good — or at least fun — there’s nothing in Venom to distract you from its total lack of cohesion. Why is Eddie Brock, a guy who’s made his name as a circumspect and hard-hitting investigative reporter, so stupid about cell phone records and wiretaps? Why does his ex-girlfriend Annie switch from representing big business with a private firm to being a public defender without so much as a single mention of guilt or complicity in the crimes of the flatly-named Life Foundation? Why don’t Eddie’s pursuers use sound to neutralize his symbiote, and why is Riz Ahmed playing this absolute nothing of a villain? Venom is thin gruel, notable only for being a slightly better than average Marvel offshoot.