Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Movie · 2021 · Science Fiction, Action, Adventure · 1h 37m · PG-13 · English

Curator score: 0.8/10 (1.1M ratings)

You are what you eat.

Overview

After finding a host body in investigative reporter Eddie Brock, the alien symbiote must face a new enemy, Carnage, the alter ego of serial killer Cletus Kasady.

Ratings

Director

Andy Serkis

Production

Columbia Pictures, Pascal Pictures, Matt Tolmach Productions, Arad Productions

Cast

Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Reid Scott, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Sian Webber, Michelle Greenidge, Rob Bowen, Laurence Spellman, Little Simz, Jack Bandeira, Olumide Olorunfemi, Scroobius Pip, Amrou Al-Kadhi, Beau Sargent, Brian Copeland, Stewart Alexander, Sean Delaney

Where to watch

Disney Plus, fuboTV

Curator Review

Verdict

A messy but oddly charming sequel that leans hard into camp, body-horror silliness, and the bizarre chemistry between Eddie and Venom. It’s short, fast, and often more fun as a joke than as a superhero movie, with a few standout performances and a knowingly absurd tone.

Best for

  • Viewers who like superhero movies with a heavy camp or comedy tilt
  • Fans of odd-couple banter and chaotic antihero energy
  • People open to a glossy, dumb, entertaining B-movie vibe
  • Audiences who enjoy queer-coded subtext and internet-memeable absurdity

Skip if

  • You want coherent plotting or serious stakes
  • You dislike broad humor and self-aware silliness
  • You expect polished action choreography over personality
  • You are not in the mood for a movie that treats chaos as the main attraction

Overview

Venom: Let There Be Carnage works best when it stops trying to be respectable and embraces its own ridiculousness. The movie is built around a strange, squabbling symbiote-buddy dynamic that plays like a breakup comedy with teeth, and that friction gives it more personality than many cleaner blockbuster sequels.

Worth noting

It’s also very uneven. The story is thin, the villain is underused in places, and the film often feels like it is sprinting from one joke or fight to the next without much connective tissue. But the energy is real, and the movie knows how to turn bad taste into entertainment.

Bottom line

If you’re in the right mood, the camp, the body-horror flourishes, and the gleeful nonsense can be a feature rather than a bug. If you’re not, it will feel like a loud sketch stretched to feature length. Either way, it is never boring for long.

Top Letterboxd reviews

Rendy Jones (3.5★) · 8631 likes

The best gay rom-com of the year. The MCU could never.

Vinny Simms (2.5★) · 5582 likes

Venom goes to a gay rave and says he’s out of the Eddie closet

comrade_yui (5★) · 5165 likes

venom LITERALLY said gay rights!!! they gave every single worst line in the script to michelle williams and she carried that shit like a champ. robert richardson photographed the crap out of this as well when he definitely didn't need to. absolutely dumb as hell, i loved every second of it. reminds you that capeshit doesn't have to be totally irredeemable self-important garbage; there's hope for cinema yet! give me a hundred more screwball comedies with big stupid queer slime creatures!!!

Sabrina 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (3★) · 4763 likes

More homosexual undertones than The Lighthouse. You think I’m kidding but I’m not.

•lily• (3★) · 3149 likes

Fellas is it gay to want to kiss the alien that is inside your body

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Topics

superhero, action-comedy, body horror, camp, queer-coded, antihero, chaotic, comic-book, odd-couple, B-movie

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