![]() ![]() In an early confrontation between Brock and Kasady - which the script bends over backwards to accommodate - the convicted murderer gestures to our uncomfortable fascination with true-crime (“People love serial killers!”) there’s a striking animated sequence depicting the horrors of Kasady’s past Peggy Lu’s scene-stealing shopkeeper Mrs Chen shows how fun Venom’s body-swapping conceit could be. Throughout, there are brief glimmers of a better film. Even an implied poultry massacre takes place off-screen. ![]() ![]() Woody Harrelson’s incoming villain, serial killer Cletus Kasady - mercifully shorn of the bizarre Mick Hucknall wig he donned in the last film’s cameo, now replaced by a creepy crew-cut - trades on Zodiac-coded creepiness but never feels threatening, and when his symbiote parasite (named ‘Carnage’ for no discernible reason) takes over, any trademark head-chomping is left to the imagination. Once again, that PG-13 rating (an extraordinarily mild 15 here in the UK) is perhaps the biggest flaw here, leaving Serkis hamstrung with a titular promise that simply cannot be delivered upon - there’s precious little carnage to be had. The splodgy-symbiote effects are a marginal improvement over the previous film, but it’s impossible not to ponder what Serkis could have created with a bigger budget and bolder rating. Ruben Fleischer is out as director, replaced by the great Andy Serkis - but any hopes that the performance-capture genius, behind richly drawn CG creations like Gollum and Planet Of The Apes’ Caesar, might be able to conjure some clarity among the quick-cutting chaos of the dimly lit action sequences are soon dashed. It’s especially disappointing given the talent involved this time out. (Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Scenes From A Symbiote Marriage’, anyone?) But while a Venom-Brock romcom sounds fun, the reality is a tonal mishmash of unfunny gags - Venom’s voice-over trash-talk is woefully lame, a watered-down stream of Deadpool-ish, audience-winking irreverence that plays like a symbiotic director’s commentary you can’t turn off - layered on a poorly plotted story with action sequences that don’t hold up to the myriad other comic-book movies out there. There’s a kernel of a good idea here - that Let There Be Carnage is a kind of double break-up movie, as Brock wrestles with his split from Michelle Williams’ Anne (still grossly underused) while also doubting his relationship with Venom. There’s precious little carnage to be had. That PG-13 rating is perhaps the biggest flaw here, leaving Serkis hamstrung. ![]()
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