Film Review: ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ is a Gloriously Stupid Capper to a Ridiculous Trilogy

In one sense, it’s high time for this franchise to end. The Venom trilogy has never been particularly good and felt like a relic of a prior comic book film era. On the other hand, they’ve been getting progressively better (or less bad, if you will), so the series has finally figured out more or less how to have fun with the whole thing. Wrapping up with Venom: The Last Dance, the movie is gloriously stupid in a way that makes it, while not of high quality, a good amount of fun.

Venom: The Last Dance is a ridiculous flick, in that it’s largely lacking in plot, just bouncing from an action set-piece to a comedy bit, and back again. You’re always aware of how stupid it is, but that’s sometimes a charm here. In a way, the series has worn you down to accept Venom as a buddy comedy, as opposed to a dangerous Spider-Man villain. Go figure.

Picking up after the last film and dealing with its credits sequence in a way we don’t need to address, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote Venom are on the run. Not only is the government after them, led by Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Venom’s creator Knull has dispatched monsters as well. Strickland has studied the symbiotes along with Dr. Payne (Juno Temple), but arrival of Detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham) signals something no one is prepared for.

With everyone and everything closing in on the pair, they encounter an old friend like Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), as well as new ones in a family led by an alien obsessive father (Rhys Ifans). Eventually, Eddie and Venom will be forced to make tough decisions, with their very lives on the line, in the hopes of saving humanity. Cue a massive battle at the end, as well as an unusual turn towards an attempt at emotion.

Tom Hardy continues to take a gonzo approach to Eddie Brock. He’s happy to go nuts, times two, though it’s channeled in a less distracting way than usual. This is his best turn of the three, actually giving a performance instead of just going randomly wild. Chiwetel Ejiofor is absolutely wasted, as is Juno Temple, while Rhys Ifans is part of a subplot that really goes almost nowhere, albeit one with a little bit of charm. In addition to Stephen Graham and Peggy Lu, supporting players here include Clark Backo, Cristo Fernández, Hala Finley, Dash McCloud, Alanna Ubach, and more.

Writing and directing this time around, Kelly Marcel (who shares a Story By credit with Hardy) wants you to just turn off your brain and have fun. How much you’re willing to do that probably will be a factor on how much Venom: The Last Dance works for you. Venom was awful to me, while Venom: Let There Be Carnage felt like a real missed opportunity. This time, it’s shorter, silly, and has moments of comedy that actually work. The action is very generic, but it gets the job done, more or less.

Venom: The Last Dance is very dumb, but when it’s fun, it’s very fun. If you’ve enjoyed the trilogy so far, you’ll almost certainly like this one the best of all. If it’s never been your cup of tea, you’re unlikely to suddenly become a fan, but this is the closest one to succeeding yet. If they had actually made a fourth one, I actually think it could have been pretty good. Oh well, it still is a franchise going out on a relative high, so there’s that.

SCORE: ★★1/2