Venom: Let There Be Carnage



Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a 2021 superhero film directed by Andy Serkis that is a sequel to 2018's Venom and the second film set in Sony's Spider-Man Universe. It featured Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom, Woody Harrelson as Cletus Kassady/Carnage, Michelle Williams as Ann Weying and Naomie Harris as Shriek. The film is considered an improvement over the first film.

After the events of the previous movie, Eddie Brock has become a nationally famous journalist, but for some reason cannibal serial killer Cletus Kassady has a devotion to Eddie, making the police ask Brock to interview him again in hope Kletus let it slip where the bodies of his victims are buried, so a proper case can be made for his death sentence to be executed. Kletus ends up doing giving him away the location in the form of a poem, mistaking Eddie for a friend.

Eddie finds the place, informs the police, and with the bodies discovered, his fame increases even more. Feeling used, Kletus taunts Eddie about the fact his mother died in childbirth and his father personally blamed him for his death when Eddie visits him just before his execution. Venom comically overreacts, getting Brock at biting distance of the cannibal, resulting in both Venom and Eddie having bits of them bitten off and ingested by Kletus. During his execution, a new symbiote emerges from Kletus, called Carnage, and both proceed to escape, seeking to freed Kassady' childhood girlfriend Shriek, who have sound-based super-powers, from the institution where she has been imprisoned for over twenty years.

Directed by Andy Serkis. Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing.


 * Adapted Out: Shriek was a mutant in the comics, but thanks to Sony having no rights over any X-Men media, those aspects were excluded. The plot just goes along as she having those powers naturally without any reference to the X-Men.
 * Antagonistic Offspring: Carnage and Venom end up confronting each other and, having grown into an anti-hero, Venom is repulsed by Carnage's lust for killing, while Carnage sees Venom as an existential threat to his "dream" of ruling the world.
 * Berserk Button: Played for Laughs. Cletus affirms Eddie's father hates him because his mother died in childbirth. Brock is barely fazed by it, but Venom inadvertently gets very angry on Eddie's proxy, tries to beat up Kassady, and gets himself and Eddie bitten by the serial killer because of it.
 * Big Bad: Cletus Kassady. Even if the Symbiote clearly tries to take control, Kletus is responsible for his birth and Carnage stay attached to him, making the serial killer the primary cause behind the plot.
 * Blow You Away: Carnage can generate tornadoes with his tentacles.
 * Coming Out Story: Andy Serkis described the film as this. Even Venom says he's "Coming out of the Eddie closet."
 * The Cracker: One of Carnage's minor powers is to hack into computers by inserting parts of himself into the circuits.
 * Denser and Wackier: The film has more cheesy humor than the first film.
 * Horrible Judge of Character: A villainous version. Cletus see himself and Eddie as similar, but Eddie is repulsed by him and uses the cryptic clue Cletus gave him to make himself famous and give the Californian government reason to sentence Cletus to death.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Cletus is a cannibal who killed living people before. He literally eats the piece of Eddie he rips off with a mouth in a fight, and the piece of Venom in it develops into Carnage.
 * Lean and Mean: Cletus Kassady.
 * Man of Kryptonite: Shriek's power is to produce hyper-vibrating sounds, who makes symbiotes convulsive and unfocused.
 * Precision F-Strike: Venom yells "Fuck this guy!"
 * Race Lift: Shriek is white to the point looking like a ghost in the comics. In this film, she is black.
 * Sonic Scream: Shriek's superpower. It gets her imprisoned a solitary cell designed to contain her as she grows too much strong to be put on a normal prison.
 * The Stinger
 * Title Drop: Carnage says the film's subtitle during the climax.
 * With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Defied by Venom, that says responsibility is for the mediocre when Eddie tries to rein him in from his anti-heroism by bringing up the concept.