I hadn't intended to watch Venom after hearing of its critical drubbing, but when I saw it got a respectable 6.8 from user reviews I thought maybe it was worth taking a look.

It wasn't. It isn't.

This first thing to be said about Venom is it is really, really boring. The setup, in which we see Eddie Brock's pre-Venom life, goes on forever (well, maybe a half hour), interspersed on with a few look-how-evil-I-am scenes for the villain. At a certain point I started using the skip-forward button on my video player to see if I could find where the action started.

As for the action, it was fine, I suppose. Venom's shape-shifting abilities lead to some decent moments. Not *great* moments, but decent.

In fact, if you removed all the non-action scenes you'd have something short but tolerable. But it would be very short, because even when the movie kicks into its highest gear, there's still a lot of down time.

The repartee between Venom and Brock is okay, but Upgrade, which I haven't seen yet, has a more entertaining take on the same basic concept in the *trailer*.

Some critics described this movie as awful but entertainingly so. This is not true. This is unentertainingly awful. It should not be watched, by anyone, ever. The people rating it highly on IMDB should seek psychiatric help.