Review: Second 'Venom' movie is all speed and action, with no time to rest or think about the 'Carnage' on display

There’s no subtlety in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” the second installment in the Spider-Man-adjacent comic-book franchise — there’s just breakneck action and mayhem, loud, fast and barely in control.

Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock, the self-destructive San Francisco reporter who was taken over in the 2018 film “Venom” by an alien symbiote with a lot of teeth and an appetite for human brains. Eddie’s still something of a screw-up, but he’s reached a truce of sorts with his alien alter ego, where Venom agrees not to eat people, no matter how much they might deserve it. In exchange, Venom helps Eddie on his news gathering.

Eddie has been handed a big scoop, exclusive access to imprisoned serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), whose crimes are so heinous, we’re told, that the governor of California has lifted the moratorium on the death penalty. Shortly before his execution, though, Eddie gets a little too close to Cletus, who bites Eddie on the hand — and transferring a little bit of Venom’s powers into Cletus’ blood stream. In the death chamber, Cletus’ blood fights back against the lethal injection, and out emerges a bigger, meaner symbiote, which takes the name Carnage.

Carnage tells Cletus that he wants to kill his maker, Venom. Cletus wants Carnage to help find and free his lady love, Frances Barrison (Naomie Harris), who was separated from Cletus in the orphanage, and has been sitting in a top-secret lab ever since. Frances, we learn, has the ability to scream at ear-piercing decibel levels, earning her the supervillain moniker Shriek.

Frances also has someone she wants killed: The cop who shot out her left eye. That cop is now an SFPD detective, Mulligan (Stephen Graham), who suspects Eddie knows more about Cletus’ escape than he’s letting on. When Mulligan takes Eddie in for questioning, Eddie uses his one phone call to call his lawyer ex-girlfriend, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), who’s now engaged to her boyfriend from the first movie, Dr. Dan Lewis (Reid Scott).

Director Andy Serkis has his foot on the accelerator from start to finish, scarcely allowing a moment’s relief from the boom-boom action and computer-animated chaos. That’s probably a wise choice, because the plot — the script is by Kelly Marcel, who co-wrote the first one, and who shares story credit with Hardy — would probably fall apart if one were given 30 seconds to think about it. For starters, it does no good to dwell on how Harrelson’s over-the-top performance, all sneering and snarling and Freddy Krueger-level one-liners, is practically a return to his character from “Natural Born Killers.”

But there is a ruthless efficiency in how Serkis fast-forwards through the action beats. And his expertise on performance-capture acting — he is the guy who portrayed Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings,” and Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” — is deployed well to help Hardy bring out Venom’s physicality.

Hardy comes close to appearing like he’s actually enjoying himself in this big, loud action movie, which may be all we can hope for from such a “serious” actor. He leans into the humor of Eddie’s love-hate relationship with his alien “roommate,” and in the quirks of this Jekyll/Hyde dynamic. Hardy signals to the audience that we shouldn’t take “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” too seriously, whatever the body count, and just treat it like a very messy video game.

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‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some strong language, disturbing material and suggestive references. Running time: 93 minutes.