8 Reasons Upgrade Is The Year's Best Venom Movie

3. It's More Stylish Despite Having 5% Of The Budget

Sony quite sensibly budgeted Venom at "only" $100 million - a fairly modest figure for the superhero genre - and with a more inspired filmmaker at the helm, that probably should've been enough to make it a slickly entertaining, visually vibrant effort.

Under director Ruben Fleischer, however, Venom never really rises above resembling a garden variety superhero movie, complete with generic shot-reverse-shot dialogue scenes and mostly mediocre action accompanied by blurry, garish visual effects.

While Upgrade's style was distinctly more limited by its mere $4-5 million budget, it's astounding how much Whannell was able to wring out of such a tiny price tag. The world feels genuinely futuristic, the bursts of action don't look even remotely cheap, and it overall feels like a far more slick and confident package than Venom does in even its better moments.

Not a single action beat in Venom is nearly as entertaining or well-executed as Whannell's decision to fix the camera on an axis around Marshall-Green during Upgrade's action sequences, giving the STEM-assisted carnage a heightened, surreal feel. Venom's action, on the other hand, mostly resembles generic slop torn out of the early 2000s.

It's clear proof that a blockbuster budget doesn't really mean a whole lot without a filmmaker who knows how to use it, and that low-budget directors like Whannell have to learn to be resourceful through sheer necessity.