Venom the movie, much like Venom the character, is a sloppy, amorphous mishmash that attempts to be too many things and ultimately fails at all of them. At various times, it tries its hand at horror, slapstick comedy, self-aware comedy, romance and drama. That's an ambitious combination that would make any movie difficult to take seriously, let alone one with a wisecracking alien blob monster.

The chilling opening scene shows a private space exploration mission return to Earth with samples of alien symbiotes. Shockingly, something goes wrong, one sample escapes and jumps between human hosts, searching for the best fit. It's a chilling sequence that sets the tone for a much darker story than what actually follows.

In a jarringly clunky transition, the story jumps to Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy doing his idea of a New York accent) and his fiancé, Anne (Michelle Williams) living happily in San Francisco. Hardy goes all in on playing the anxious, twitchy guy who is great at his job but is also kind of a loser and has the most peculiar gait. He walks the way someone would walk if you told them, "hey, walk in the weirdest way possible, like in a way that no one would ever actually walk." It's completely transfixing.

Eddie's awkward walk aligns with his natural tendency to create awkward situations. He is a successful reporter who is known for pushing boundaries, so it's only too obvious what he will do when interviewing shady billionaire, Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), for what is supposed to be a puff piece.

In another less-than-stellar transition, the timeline fast-forwards six months and shows Eddie's life in shambles. This might have been affecting if any of this felt earned, but certain essential scenes are absent and were likely trimmed in editing to put the final runtime under two hours. Choices like these give the entire film a rushed, erratic feel of something that had ideas but didn't know how to piece them together into a fluid story arc.

Meanwhile, all this has happened and still Venom has yet to make an appearance. The movie spends too much time on nonessential plot points and takes too long to reach the most compelling and entertaining parts. In other words, the movie is called Venom, so put Venom in the movie.

When Venom finally shows up, the movie finally has life. Sort of. Venom and Eddie exchange banter that occasionally delivers winning punchlines, a few of which caused outbursts of laughter throughout the theater. That's great. The problem is the dozens of other jokes that were met with crickets or confusion. This might be due to Venom's abrupt language advancements. He quickly evolves from monosyllabic commands of "food!" to offering insightful romantic advice. It's another case of unearned plot and character development.

But the worst parts of the movie are the incomprehensible and nearly unwatchable action sequences that didn't follow any discernable rules of continuity or visual logic. I didn't know where to look and half the time I didn't even know what I was looking at. That's the downside of fight scenes that rely too heavily on CGI. The climactic fight scene involves a bizarre swirling tornado of Venom and another blob monster that is meant to resemble a warrior-like battle, but the comically wide-open mouths and tongue swinging turns the display into something that looks more like a sloppy teenage make out session.

It's a dumb scene in a dumb movie that never quite figures itself out. Marvel has made many great movies over the past 10 years. Venom is not one of them.