Venom (2018)

Venom is a film about a man with a symbiote living inside him that occasionally surfaces to give him superpowers and save the day.

Venom the film is a bad movie with a better movie inside it that occasionally surfaces to save it from being a complete disaster.

The film is overlong in the first act, underdeveloped in the second, so by the time the third comes along, it's barely kicking into its groove.

It has the feel of an 80s TV pilot - one that wasn't successful enough to go to air, but had glimpses of something intriguing.

The good it in it: Tom Hardy's double-act as Eddie Brock and Venom. This is absolutely the selling point of the film, and something that I felt worked really well. But we spend too long getting to it, and then the relationship development takes all of a single line of dialogue.

There are some action scenes that rather than being an edge of the seat white-knuckle ride, only really make it into the moderately interesting category. There are two things missing for me: emotional heft and decent camera placement. I felt as if I was watching from a distance rather than being in the middle of the action. The scenes aren't terrible, they're just not as good as they should have been.

The one thing the film managed was to leave me wanting more of the Brock/Venom partnership - only wrapped up in a better film next time, please.

Assuming there is a next time.