8 Reasons Upgrade Is The Year's Best Venom Movie

4. The Strong Character Development

While everybody knows the basics about Eddie and Venom, the film does a pretty terrible job of developing either of them outside of the most basic beats.

Eddie never really feels convincingly like a world-class journalist, and most of his personal drama throughout the film - especially his relationship woes with Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) - resemble a box-ticking exercise more than anything.

Meanwhile in Upgrade, Grey is surprisingly well-drawn, with clear, pointed character traits laid out from the outset - namely his distrust of technology and fondness for analogue solutions - and the obvious turmoil that follows both his paralysis and the death of his wife.

It would've been easy for Whannell to simply make a fairly formulaic revenge action flick, but to his credit, the character drama feels as potent as the grisly violence, which absolutely isn't the case with Venom.