Venom: The Last Dance

Venom: The Last Dance sees Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his alien symbiote partner Venom (Tom Hardy) on the run after the events of 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The duo heads from Mexico to New York to clear Eddie’s name, but are pursued by soldier Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), as well as a monstrous Xenophage sent by the dark god of the symbiotes, Knull.

2018’s Venom was a mediocre-in-theory action film that accidentally became a great romcom, which Let There Be Carnage leaned into. The Last Dance embraces Eddie and Venom’s romance but moves in an unexpectedly introspective direction, sincerely engaging with themes of isolation, marginalisation and grief for an unattainable “normal” life that comes with an existence on the fringes of society in a surprising but not unwelcome evolution of Venom’s arc.

This considered approach doesn’t sacrifice the trademark Venom silliness – The Last Dance ramps up its absurdity as well as its pathos, with some great goofy sequences bolstered by Hardy hamming it up, more intense and dishevelled than ever.

Unfortunately, The Last Dance falls flat with its villains. The Xenophage, while a serviceable allegory for the constant threat of institutional violence, is an uninspired monster, and Strickland doesn’t bring much thematically or visually interesting to the table.

The lukewarm antagonists are a symptom of larger structural issues – it often feels like too much happens while not much happens at all. The creative team crammed in several new ideas with the understanding that this would be the grand finale, but these additions smother the story and each other. Thankfully the true bread and butter of the Venom movies – the complicated love affair between Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy – is largely unaffected, with the main emotional beats landing amid the mayhem.

On paper, there is no way Venom: The Last Dance should work. Structurally overstuffed in many places and thematically underbaked in others, it’s undoubtedly a mess. However, “being good in spite of – and because of – being a mess” is practically a selling point of these films, and it would frankly be strange if the Venom finale wasn’t at least a little bit bad. It compensates for its lack of narrative focus with sheer enthusiasm and sincerity, and while it won’t win over anyone on the fence, true Venomheads can enjoy a fitting send-off to an offbeat and chaotic – but always entertaining – series of flicks.

Umar Ali

Venom: The Last Dance is released nationwide on 25^th October 2024.

Watch the trailer for Venom: The Last Dance here: