As a superhero movie fan who grew up in the 1990s, I've seen a lot of ups and downs in the genre. I've seen when it's come into its footing, and I've also seen when it was struggling trying to find what can make the genre special. As the 2010s have brought some of the stronger and genre pushing films, Venom on the other hand brings forth the mediocrity I wish we abandoned in 2002.

The film focuses on Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) as a hard boiled journalist who has reason to believe the Life Foundation is running illegal tests on humans with a alien being known as a "symbiote". After sneaking into the labs, one of the symbiote's attaches itself to Eddie and we realize that alien being is....Venom.

The easiest thing to talk about is the first 40 minutes of the movie that every one agrees is the worst part of the movie and they are absolutely right. For a film that focuses on a head chewing alien, it spends entirely too long setting up the world around it in the most boring and uninteresting way possible. The movie forces you to care about Eddie and his ex-fiance, but there is NO chemistry between them whatsoever.

Even when Venom attaches itself to Eddie, not only does it feel too little too late, it also is never as interesting as it should be. We never get to see Venom until almost an hour into this 110 minute movie and none of the action was worth the wait. The action is shoddily and dimly shot which is shocking given this was by a cinematographer I tend to like Matthew Libatique. It gets even worse when it gets into the finale which is a splash of CGI blobs being smashed together.

There are many people who enjoyed Venom, and personally I'm not one of them. I never found Venom as an interesting anti-hero, but instead just a thing that exists for franchise money. The film obviously is missing 20 minutes of solid character development and the end credits sequence doesn't excite me for a sequel at all. It's not the worst movie I've seen this year, but its one that frustrates me given how far superhero movies have come for films like this to exist.