Metacritic reviews

This leaves the viewer with two choices: reject the parasite or let it take you over. Fight it off and you’ll have a bad time; become one with it and you may achieve a kind of symbiosis.

Venom isn’t quite bad, but it’s not exactly good either. It’s noncommittally mediocre and, as a result, forgettable. It just sort of sits there, beating you numb, unsure of whether it wants to be a comic-book movie or put the whole idea of comic-book movies in its crosshairs.

Like his hungry symbiote latching onto Eddie, Fleischer cunningly fastens a malicious irreverence onto an otherwise lacklustre superhero movie. But the symbiosis doesn’t quite take.

Tom Hardy’s committed performance can’t overcome a painful script and indecisive direction, resulting in a film with a personality that’s as split as its titular character. There are occasional moments of brilliance in the dynamic between Eddie and Venom that give a hint of what the film could have been in steadier hands, but ultimately, that only makes the finished product a more frustrating viewing experience.

Venom is a textbook case of a comic-book film that’s unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura.

Directed with flat, joyless competence by Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland,” “Gangster Squad”), “Venom” brings with it a laborious, decades-spanning development history. A movie this long in the works should arrive on-screen feeling like more than just an afterthought.

There are in fact one or two big gags, but no real sense of fun - not compared to something like Thor: Ragnarok. Director Ruben Fleischer, who made Zombieland and Gangster Squad, is uninspired. Venom is riddled with the poison of dullness.

Venom feels like a throwback, a poor second cousin to the all-stars that have reliably dominated the box-office charts for most of this century. Partly, this is due to the fact that, as an origin story, this one seems rote and unimaginative. On top of that, the writing and filmmaking are blah in every respect; the film looks like an imitator, a wannabe, not the real deal.

Venom can be quite a lively watch, both as a reminder of why Hollywood stopped making superhero films like this, and also for the occasional glimpse of the off-the-wall, star-driven freak-out that might have been.... But in terms of basic entertainment, let alone as the foundation of a franchise, it is miserably shaky stuff.

It exists as a waste of time (although, one hopes, a sizable payday) for some very talented actors, and it’s proof that even Marvel doesn’t always get it right.