After the success of Spider-Man Homecoming, fans were expecting Spider-Man’s arch enemy to come to the big screen in an amazing way. Venom, one of Marvel’s most savage and badass anti-heroes, hit the screen on October 5th to lukewarm reviews from fans.

For these fans, Venom was what they wanted and a lot of Venom the character is what they got. This anti-hero dominated the screen in a below average, but enjoyable film. Though the film didn’t really get good reviews from critics – IGN gave it a 4/10, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 31%, and Metacritic gave it 35% – it has some solid moments. It was a brutal first week for Venom but the film will survive as all Marvel films seem to do.

The main plot of Venom is pretty basic and easy to understand with Eddie Brock, played by Tom Hardy, becoming the anti-hero Venom. It’s your typical superhero origin story and Hardy’s performance as a man who is struggling with his actions and thoughts because of a living alien inside of him is pretty vigorous and great to watch. Unfortunately, the human characters fall flat and hurt the film. The main villain is Carlton Drake, played by Riz Ahmed. Drake is not an interesting character at all. He’s just a simple villain who does evil things because of the science of evolution. This just isn’t a good motivation for a villain. Eddie’s ex-girlfriend Anne Weying, played by Michelle Williams, isn’t a good love interest because there’s not a lot of chemistry or connection between the two characters.

However, what the movie lacks in characters it makes up for with excellent action. The movie has many eye-popping, cool, and amazing effects. Venom’s action scenes are stunning. The only problem I had is that sometimes the action was hard to see because of all the rapid camera moves and edits.
At times, it felt like I was watching a terrible Transformers movie. Even with the bad editing, the movie’s action scenes were enough to make the film worthwhile and amazing to watch.

In all honesty, Venom is an interesting film, but its poor character choices and lack of connection between them make it problem-filled. However, this does not warrant al of the negative reviews. Venom is a good movie choice if you just want to watch a simple action movie that has some surprising action.