Venom: Let There Be Carnage Review - 5 Ups & 5 Downs

2. It Should've Been Rated R (Again)

One of the biggest complaint about the first Venom was its "family-friendly" PG-13 rating. Given the character's tendency to bite off human heads and devour brains, a permissive R rating absolutely seemed to be the way to go.

Instead, the original film tidied up Venom in the quest for more box office bucks, a ploy which totally worked yet left the film awkwardly cutting around the character's most violent instincts.

The same is sadly true in Let There Be Carnage, and it runs doubly so because the film also has Carnage out in the wild biting off people's heads left and right.

Unaided by the already messy editing, the film is forced to clumsily keep the brutality mostly off-screen, concealing beheaded bodies underneath sheets, shooing characters out of frame just as they're about to be devoured, and basically doing a massive disservice to Venom and Carnage in the process.

There are few movie franchises that have changed their content rating mid-series, so there weren't any sensible expectations that Let There Be Carnage would be rated R.

Nevertheless, this film only confirms how much better the series could be with the brutality of the comics splashed across the screen.