Where the adventures of an alien life form from outer space known as "Venom", which is cohabiting in the body of previously unremarkable journalist Eddie Brock (played by Tom Hardy), continue. Eddie seems otherwise normal but when danger arises, Venom may protrude from his body or even transform him into Venom in order to deal with it. This time the plot concerns how the reckless actions of Venom gives rise to a new foe which scares even Venom himself. Why that fear should exist in him (it?) is glossed over in the film but perhaps is explained in some other medium in which the characters exists, like comics or whatever, so, in that sense, it excludes the casual viewer of this film.

The principal antagonist is Cletus Kasady (played by Woody Harrelson). With Frances Barrison (played by Naomi Harris), they are star-crossed lovers, following a well-worn trajectory: boy meets girl, girl is forced into high-security detention due to an X-Men kind of superhero ability, boy becomes even more of a mass murderer than he was before and...you can guess the rest, I'm sure.

I saw a trailer for this film in the cinema a few weeks back and it looked interesting enough to take a chance by seeing it, even though I hadn't seen the original film in this new franchise which is, no doubt, the origin story of the Brock/Venom pairing (not quite as formidable a pairing as Brock/Richards or Brock/Perkins but still). Generally I found the film amusing enough for the odd couple antics of Brock/Venom. Well, since I've never seen the TV series "The odd couple", maybe the better analogy is to invoke the antics of an old couple which bickers most of the time. Most of the humour comes from Venom but maybe I only understood what he said about two thirds of the time, due to the special effects applied to generate his voice. There's violence in the film but I don't remember it being too shocking (I saw this today), however, if you are squeamish, I suppose the appearance of Venom out of Brock could be a bit much for some although it's more anodyne body horror than anything else. Otherwise there's really not to much to wag your finger about. There was frequent talk of "brains" in the film but, again, any horror or violence is only intimated. The "M" rating the film has in Australia is appropriate.

If you can say that the narrative arc of Kasady and Barrison is shown here, maybe you can also say that other characters' origin stories as superpowered are also shown but once again, I'd guess that to get full value from those scenes, you'd need to be immersed in the lore of this world from other media, like comics etc.

Maybe others will get more value from the Kasady/Barrison narrative arc than I did and rate this film higher than me. Which is not to say that I don't realise that Kasady does raise a fair point to Brock late in the film. This film was entertaining enough but even the usual Marvel teaser during the end credits didn't leave me with the desire to see the next Venom film. I do have a vague recollection of that original film being received negatively by audiences and critics, which was confirmed by looking at the Wikipedia page for it in writing this review. That being said, I might be interested in seeing that Venom origin story...and I missed the chance to record it on FTA commercial TV the other day...so...maybe next time? I would hazard a guess that the humour works better in this first sequel, in any case...although...I found the character of Doctor Dan (played by Reid Scott) a wet blanket in this film. There's not much sophistication to his time on the screen. Maybe he's not bad...he's just drawn that way?