Venom: The Last Dance offers 'mild pleasures' but a 'banal' plot

The film explores a man named Eddie Brock possessed by a fanged, body-snatching alien parasite

(Image credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo)

published 2 November 2024

"With the 2018 film Venom, Tom Hardy locked himself into a three-picture deal, giving his time, talents and torso to this saga about a man named Eddie Brock possessed by a fanged, body-snatching alien parasite", which jumps in and out of his body at will, said Amy Nicholson in The New York Times. Venom: The Last Dance brings the trilogy to a close, and it is, "in glimpses", quite interesting: a drama about a drunk who is "unbearably lonely despite being conjoined with a garrulous monster".

In the first film Eddie was an investigative journalist with a fiancé; "here, he's a filthy drifter" who has lost "his career, his woman and his reputation", and been forced to go on the run. There are "mild pleasures" to be had – such as the moment when Eddie/Venom is "suctioned to the fuselage of an airplane" and sighs: "It is so unpleasantly cold." But these are "overwhelmed by a barrage of underdeveloped supporting characters", played by the likes of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rhys Ifans, and by a "banal" plot about saving the world.