Venom

"This is what a series of bad decisions stretched out over a very long development history looks like. Venom wants to be a darkly comedic body-horror and a compelling anti-hero comic book caper. It also tries to shock life back into Sony's sub-Marvel mini-verse, which seemingly died along with the Amazing Spider-Man films. It only succeeds in being a supremely average film that mostly frustrates and baffles rather than thrills."

"The advertising tagline for the chronically dull and odious Venom reads: "The world has enough superheroes." Thus implying the panacea for Hollywood's over-supply of smug do-gooders is this film's protagonist: an egomaniacal ‘gotcha!’ TV journalist with a voice inside his head belonging to an alien parasite. An instance if ever there was one of the remedy being worse than the poison."

""Venom" is a textbook case of a comic-book film that's unexciting in its ho-hum competence, and even its visual-effects bravura."

"Fleischer made a better comedy-horror with Zombieland, but Venom's a decent buddy actioner. You might even laugh your head off..."

"Why can't the movie make Venom properly dirty? The PG-13 rating seriously hurts."

"Venom is riddled with the poison of dullness."

""Venom" feels like pretty weak poison."

"A significant problem in a film full of them is that Eddie comes off as a dope, an eager dufus hardly convincing as a boundary-pushing journo or someone who can out-think a titan of technology."

"Venom is neither triumph nor train-wreck. It's a mediocre origin story, a superhero host that sadly fails to bond with its comedy parasite."