Venom Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

4. The Tonal Shifts

Whether this is the most genius meta thing of all time ever or just a massive mistake, there's actually a pretty clever identity crisis at play in Venom. You could claim that the two parts of the film are supposed to be a conscious mirror of the split between Eddie Brock and the symbiote. You could claim that until you're blue in the face, but you'll notice the film-makers haven't yet, so it's probably not true.

The reality is that the film has a serious identity problem. For the first half - pretty much until we get to see Venom in full flow, in fact - it's a dull, quasi-horror film that plods along with only Tom Hardy's interesting performance really keeping it above water. The writing is poor, characters are instantly forgettable and it really, really drags.

However - and it's a big however, kids - there's a moment of revelation that comes when Venom starts to get his claws in and suddenly Ruben Fleischer realises he should be making an entirely different film. He picks up his How To Make Deadpool handbook and takes the best of what happened in Ryan Reynolds' first film and runs with it, pulling in from other sources like The Mask, The Nutty Professor and Steve Martin's All Of Me. There's even an edge of Fight Club in there too.

And honestly, that second film in there is absolutely brilliant. It's just a shame it's pulled down by the other bit.