Film Review: Venom (2005)

SYNOPSIS:

A weird tow truck driver is possessed by evil spirits after being bitten by a bunch of cursed snakes. He then goes on a killing spree, butchering anyone unfortunate enough to come into contact with him.

REVIEW:

Not to be confused with the superior 1981 film of the same name (or the awesome Spider-Man villain)Venom is a pretty hokey flick that wants desperately to be like an ‘80’s slasher flick. It fails miserably in its attempt and ends up being just another crappy post-Scream trendy teeny bopper movie that is marketed toward the teen crowd who enjoy watching shows such as “Gossip Girl,” “Dawson’s Creek,” and countless other horrible television shows that the CW (or WB for us old folks) air on a regular basis. Considering the fact that Jim Gillespie directed it and Kevin Williamson produced it (they also collaborated on the equally terrible film version of I Know What You Did Last Summer that wasn’t anything like Lois Duncan’s novel that it was supposed to be based on) I wasn’t too surprised that Venom was pretty bad.

I thought that the overall story was just silly, especially when it came to how the tow truck driver got possessed (snakes that were basically filled with the evil from different people?! Really, guys?). The explanation as to why the snakes were loaded with evil spirits in the first place was a total rip off of why the piñata ran around killing people in Piñata: Survival Island (am I the only person in the world that actually liked that movie, by the way?)I guess in theory the idea a sort of cool, but it doesn’t work in the end and turns out being silly and ridiculously stupid.

I also didn’t like a single character that appeared in this film. As I have said time and time again, it is very hard to really like a movie if you don’t give a damn about any of the characters in it, and Venom is a perfect example of this. The biggest majority of them were annoying, unlikable, stereotypical, and just plain bad in general. If you’ve seen any of Gillespie or Williamson’s other movies then you’ve already seen the characters that appear in this film. I didn’t mind seeing them die in a number of different ways (actually I enjoyed watching them perish as it meant that I didn’t have to see them anymore) and to be honest most of them didn’t get killed off soon enough if you ask me. Like the overall plot and screenplay the characters are predictable, sloppily done, and not interesting at all.

Just about the only good thing I can say about this movie is that actually has a decent body count and some of the death scenes aren’t bad. We get quite a variety of different deaths including someone having his arm ripped off and left to bleed to death, a screwdriver to the head, a crushed body followed by a sandblasted face, and some other fun stuff. The movie itself may suck out loud but I’ll have to admit that I did like the fact that it was super violent and was pretty satisfied by how many people ended up getting killed off by the time that the end credits started to roll.

Overall I just wasn’t a fan of Venom. I thought that it was poorly written, the acting was terrible, and it was one of the most clichéd horror films I have seen in my entire life. It isn’t scary in the least and really not that interesting to boot. I remember it having a very short theatrical run and bombing at the box office so I had pretty low expectations before I watched it, which was good because if I had been expecting it to rule I would have really been disappointed. Skip this one as I have a very hard time recommending it to anyone. If you want to see a good slasher flick set in the swamps of Louisiana then do yourself a favor and watch Adam Green’s Hatchet and Hatchet 2 instead.

Venom is now available on Bluray per Echo Bridge Entertainment

Venom (2005)