Believe it or not, I had hopes that Venom might have been good. Not great, just good. Those expectations fell not too far into the movie, before Venom even showed up. The jokes were falling flat, everyone was getting frustrated with Eddie (Tom Hardy) being quite irritating, and nothing much entertaining was happening on-screen. We were all waiting for Venom to actually appear.

It wasn't all doom and gloom though. Once Venom finally shows up, it gets a bit better. For example, when Eddie and Venom are actually bantering and telling each other off, it can be entertaining in parts and showed some potential with Venom's character. Definitely the closest anyone got to laughing in my fully packed cinema. That's another problem with the movie, though. It's quite hard to tell what's supposed to be funny and what isn't sometimes. It really is all over the place. I don't know who thought toning it down to PG-13 violence was a great idea. It was disappointing they cut so much content out of the movie.

Most of the performances were average. The CGI was not that great. Felt a bit dated and Venom didn't look that convincing for the most part. The soundtrack was passable, I suppose. Nothing really memorable. Most of the movie was mediocre/passable. As I said before, the highlights are when both Eddie and Venom are the focus together, but when it turns to the other characters it becomes a bit dull again. The action sequences range from mediocre to passable, but nothing really stands out as memorable and stuff you haven't already seen loads of times before in superhero movies. You can predict most of the plot and the twist and turns from a mile away. The villain was generic and not all that exciting. I'd suggest sitting through the post-credits sequence though.

Overall I don't feel Venom was completely unwatchable, but could have been alot better. Adding Spider-Man to the mix would have probably elevated it quite a bit alone. Overall the negatives/blandness of Venom prevent it from being a good movie. I'm still unsure if I'd like to see a sequel to it in the near future.

5/10