VIA Sony Pictures

Verdict: 4.3/5 

According to the entertainment portal IMDb, “Venom: The Last Dance” had an impressive budget of $125 million. Released on Oct. 25, the film directed by Kelly Marcel is the third movie in the series.

Upon entering the theater, I had low expectations. The personal letdown from the prior movie, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” due to the cliched portrayal of platonic relationships between characters led me to believe this would be no different. The “Venom” series went downhill from the release of the amazing first movie.

The first scene begins with the environment of a bar and a segment of a symbiote, an alien species that crash-landed from a meteor on Earth, moving freely throughout the bar. However, a new character, Officer Rex Strickland, contains the symbiote, an extraterrestrial lifeform with a parasitic ability to envelop a host and control them. The introduction seemed quite anticlimactic due to how important Strickland’s role was to the movie. With a significant environment change from the prior movies from New York, the film primarily takes place in Nevada and the Las Vegas area, with Area 51 discontinued and released to the public eye. I like the concept of being stationary in one setting throughout a film and this movie executed that in a great way from going back and forth between the stories inside Area 51 and Eddie Brock with Venom.

The introduction of the “Xenophage,” an extraterrestrial being sent from Marvel’s Venom’s main villain, Knull, was incredibly cinematic. It was sudden and clean as the Xenophage first showed its existence in pursuit of Venom and Brock, almost jump scaring the audience with its pit of teeth as a mouth. The Xenophage was portrayed more effectively as a symbiote-destroying entity than in the comics, with its grinding teeth seemingly designed specifically for exterminating symbiotes.

Brock and Venom had an incredible form of chemistry compared to previous movies but there is still room for improvement as Brock wrestles with thoughts and comparisons of what his life would look like without Venom. I loved this concept of the movie as it portrays a realistic sense of Brock’s internal thoughts. Throughout the movie, the two lash out jokes at each other, and I found myself constantly laughing at their altercations, particularly the dance with Mrs. Chen, the irony of an intimidating monster, Venom, dancing with Mrs. Chen was comedic.

The film itself had consistent pacing and a form of action that intrigued me to constantly pay attention. Along with the pace and action, the emotional aspect caused me to feel connected to the characters and feel sympathy for characters who were left worse off than other characters. Altogether, I rate this film a 4.3/5.