I Watch Films: Venom: The Last Dance

 

Venom: The Last Dance

Eddie Brock, a former investigative journalist, and the alien symbiote Venom discover they are wanted for a murder they did not commit. They head to New York to try and clear their names. Meanwhile Knull, the alien creator of the symbiotes, sends his symbiote-hunting Xenophages through portals to Earth. They want to hunt Brock/Venom down for the Codex which was created when Brock was resurrected by Venom. They can only see the Codex when Venom and Brock together create the Venom being. The Codex will let Knull escape his prison.

The fallout from this attracts the attention of General Strickland and two scientists, Teddy Paine and Sadie Christmas, at Area 51 in Nevada. Area 51 is being shut down and the various alien samples being dissolved by hideous acid spray. For the time being they’re still operational, and learning something of the events of the previous films and of Knull, he’s ordered to send his alien-hunting team after Venom.

Attaching themselves to the outside of a plane to fly to New York, Venom and Eddie are attacked by a Xenophage. Falling to the ground they then encounter Strickland’s team who try to capture them but also encounter a Xenophage. They are killed and Eddie escapes. He encounters Martin Moon and his family in a camper van, who are on their way to watch Area 51 be destroyed as they are alien conspiracy theorists. They give him a lift to Las Vegas.

In Las Vegas Eddie and Venom meet their friend Mrs Chen have a (last) dance, are attacked by a Xenophage again, are then captured by Strickland’s new team. Back at Area 51 there’s a long and confused sequence with Xenophages, symbiotes, bonding, fighting, running, jumping, shooting, sacrifice, and some final speeches.

This supposedly brings the Venom trilogy to a close, though it leaves future Venom-symbiote adventures open. To be honest I’m not sure how I feel about it. The best parts are still Eddie and Venom bickering, and some slapstick when the symbiote forces him to move. But there’s less of that as they’re mostly aligned in what they want to do, and there’s more exposition. Eddie having to figure out how to do things without Venom’s powers to avoid attracting Xenophages is a lesser substitution for this. His continual losing of footwear and finding himself in unexpected places is okay. The monster fights and symbiote body horror is moderately interesting though only goes so far and the love of the scientists for their work is quite spooky – are they being psychically attracted or do they just love alien goo?

Watch This: Fun, energetic superhero monster film
Don’t Watch This: Not as fun as previous ones in which case it’s just CGI monster fights