Venom The Last Dance: No One (Truly, No One) Will Be Shouting for An Encore

By Chris Knight

Rating: D+

Venom: The Last Dance is the third Venom movie, which means that, according to my preferred nomenclature, it should be called Venomest. (The second, Let There Be Carnage, would have been better off titled Venomer.)

But instead, we’re stuck with The Last Dance, a dreary title that at least signals that we won’t be visiting this corner of Sony’s so-called Spider-Man universe a fourth time. (Also, content warning: Contains no Spider-Men.) Even trailers for this outing suggested a mini franchise that was tired of itself.

The movie opens on an imprisoned, shaggy-haired emo villain (an unrecognizable Andy Serkis) who introduces himself as “Knull, slicer of worlds,” which sounds more like a high-end kitchen gadget than a galactic bad guy.

Anyway, Knull’s in a void (get it?) and nursing a grudge against — well, everything and everyone. So, he sends minions into the universe looking for Venom, an alien symbiote whose DNA (or something) holds the key to Knull’s escape. Said minions are shrieky, toothy, knobbly-kneed beasties, like a cross between a camel and a shark, and not unlike a dozen other alien killing machines in other (often better) movies.

Venom isn’t just being chased by these monsters, however. He — or rather, his human half, played by Tom Hardy — is also being tracked by police and government forces, the latter represented by Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), accompanied by Teddy Payne (Juno Temple), a scientist with just enough flashback backstory to signal her importance to the tale.

If those actors’ names suggest a trend, you’re onto something. Almost everyone in the movie is British, gamely trying on American accents with varying degrees of success. Bottoming out on that front is the Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, who plays Martin Moon, a neo-hippie eager to meet a real space alien. (Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Moon). His whispering, singsong take on Yankee vernacular sounds like Owen Wilson with a head cold.

Even the film’s director, Kelly Marcel, is a Brit. It’s her first time in the chair, but she also had a hand in writing the previous two instalments, so I’m going to have to assign her some blame for the films’ increasingly poor quality, which was never much to begin with. (My reviews in the National Post started at three stars, then two. This would be a one.)

What The Last Dance comes down to is one long road trip/chase scene, a little like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, if the two characters shared a single body and had absolutely no chemistry. There’s even a musical interlude, like that film’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” — in this one it’s a cover of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” with a little fan-service soft shoe featuring Venom and Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu).

But like so many moments in this film — like the bit where Venom turns into a horse, played up in the trailers — it’s here-and-gone, quickly forgotten and making little difference to what passes for plot.

As for the finale — can you spoil a film where nothing much happens? — it’s an alien smackdown best visualized by imagining two rival seafood restaurants who decide to battle for supremacy by letting their all-you-can-eat buffets duke it out with one another.

Oh, and one final warning: The film includes both a mid-credit and post-credit scene, the latter after a scroll of names so long that the movie runs out of greatest hits from the score and resorts to elevator music backing tracks.

Is it worth the wait? I mean, if you’ve already sat through The Last Dance — and I can’t advise that you do — then you might at well see it through to the bitter end. And I do mean bitter. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, that Venom is that rare franchise whose name is literally box-office poison. And in that respect, at least, The Last Dance doesn’t disappoint.

Venom: The Last Dance. Directed by Kelly Marcel. Starring Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andy Serkis, Juno Temple, and Rhys Ifans. In theatres October 25.