Ironically, the film lacks a bit of bite...

| Nov 16, 2022

The film devotes way too much time to exposition (the first act feels like it goes on for about an hour), but once it gets going it's decent fun.

| Mar 3, 2020

The result is so infantile that you barely care to wait for the mandatory mid-credit Marvel teasers.

| Jul 29, 2019

A waste of a perfectly good Tom Hardy.

| Oct 14, 2018

The movie becomes about Eddie and Venom coming to an arrangement. There is a lot of humour, including a sly riff on the Batman movies from Marvel rival DC Comics.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 13, 2018

Venom could have brought a certain amount of sitcom silliness to a grimmer, grittier part of this world. But in the end, what might have been a bold and bracing new thing winds up being more of the same.

| Oct 10, 2018

Sony, overly intent on empire-building, has jettisoned a crucial ingredient: bite.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 10, 2018

A complete and utter tonal mess... Boring. Then silly. Then funny.

| Oct 8, 2018

An occasionally entertaining misfire that only scratches the surface of what a Venom movie could truly be.

| Original Score: C- | Oct 8, 2018

Venom is a soulless movie in which slimy creatures are trying to find host bodies.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 8, 2018

This is a paradox: Venom isn't good-nor so-bad-it's-good-and yet if there had been more of it, and if that more had been a little wilder or gorier, it probably would have been better.

| Oct 8, 2018

Manages to be both rushed and laboured, rattling through an agonising amount of setups before deciding on its split-personality buddy-comedy tone.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 7, 2018

It's not clear what precisely we've done to deserve this iteration of Venom and the hilariously goofy movie in which he stars, but it's a mixed blessing worth embracing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 5, 2018

A tone-deaf, uneven and maddeningly dumb clunker that never settles on an identity, all the way to the closing credits.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 5, 2018

Toss in characterizations that are threadbare, half-baked and in one instance borderline inexcusable to the point of being offensive and there is precious little about this one that should get anyone excited to see it.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 5, 2018

It's hard to mess up a car chase up and down the streets of San Francisco and Fleischer certainly doesn't, though at these speeds we should be gasping and laughing instead of just nodding our heads.

| Oct 5, 2018

The Venom symbiote requires a perfect match to bond with its host; otherwise, the host is doomed. The Venom movie plays like a midnight horror that has invaded a superhero movie, and while there are some laffs to be had, it's far from a perfect match.

| Original Score: 0/5 | Oct 5, 2018

Venom is intentionally gross and unintentionally funny, a film that careens all over the place but is sometimes enjoyable in its bizarreness.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 5, 2018

Mostly bad-bad, with a splash and dash of fun.

| Oct 5, 2018

Certainly I'm in a minority when it comes to my fellow critics, but I liked "Venom." Hell, if it wasn't for the sloppy and formulaic script, I might have even loved it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 5, 2018