5. Shifting Away From Horror May Have Been A Good Call After All
Sony
Though Venom does at times flirt with the idea of an R-rating, particularly during those moments where the symbiote tears the heads off of its victims, it never quite lives up to the promise of the superhero horror Fleischer spoke of when the film was first announced.
The opening, which introduces us to how the Life Foundation acquired the symbiotes, is uniquely foreboding and genuinely feels quite suspenseful. From there on in, however, Venom becomes more an action-comedy than a sci-fi horror, as Hardy's Brock verbally spars with his new alien buddy in a way few would've perhaps anticipated. The interesting thing here is that it's not actually all that dark either - Brock never feels in peril (save for the first few minutes where he encounters the symbiote) - and the film spends most of its time showing the two characters getting to know each other, rather than engaging in any sort of body horror.
It sounds absurd, and it is easy to see how such an approach has fallen afoul of criticism, but it's also brilliantly entertaining in its own, manic way. No one knows if the horror approach would've worked better - it most certainly could have - but this is the film we got. It's not spectacular, sensational or amazing, but it is enjoyable.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
