Everything I saw my friends say about Venom on social media was spot-on.

From the use of Eminem on the soundtrack to Tom Hardy’s EVERYTHING, Venom feels like it fell into a timewarp right before it was originally supposed to air in 2004 and fourteen years later, we got it.

This movie appeals to my inner:

• superhero fan
• anti-hero stan
• monster fucker
• cannibalism (in fiction) fancier

Seriously, it has something for everyone and it’s entertaining to boot.

Venom is NOT a serious superhero movie even when it tries to be a couple of times. It’s an action-comedy that’s more about Eddie Brock’s fall from grace and how he and Venom develop together than anything else. Sure, Riz Ahmed is in the film playing Carlton Drake, a scientist with eugenicist dreams, and Michelle Williams is Eddie’s long-suffering ex-girlfriend Anne, but the movie isn’t really about them.

It’s about two losers realizing that they literally can’t live without each other and falling in love.

Venom is one of the symbiotes I know the least about (I’ve always been a fan of carnage for some reason), but he’s a fleshed out and straight up FUN character who manages to steal the show even from Tom Hardy’s ridiculous portrayal of Brock. Venom is in turns adorable, hilarious, homicidal, hungry, weirdly insightful, and ready to kick all kinds of ass. I… think I love him.

Tom Hardy’s kind of a mess as Eddie Brock. You know how so many people like to say that Chris Hemsworth and Anthony Mackie are essentially “just playing themselves” in their roles as Thor and the Falcon, respectively?

Yeah, no, I felt that with Hardy. (Who I generally think is a fun actor to watch mumble and punch his way through various films…)

He was Eddie Brock but… seeing as that’s kind of what I assume Hardy’s like in his downtime? I was about it.

I’m also here for the shipping. What do I ship?

Hah!

What DON’T I ship?

(Please give me all of your fic recs for Venom so that I can bask in the brilliant weirdness of shipping a dude with the sentient alien parasite that lives in him and kind of… loves him… and his ex-girlfriend. I will also accept Venom AUs of your favorite ships – especially if you can find me some Inception Arthur/Eames ones because… I have a mighty need.)

Now, there are some weak points I mentally tagged as I watched it, but you know what?

Like Justice League, I am happy taking this film at face value. Venom isn’t actually that deep (to me), and while I can write thousands of words about the weird rough spots I noted, I… don’t want to. Venom is a fun, gross, and faintly fucked up movie and… I liked it so much more than I’d already expected.

(And I expected to like it a lot.)

10/10, best film I’ve ever watched on my birthday.

Now: when are we getting a sequel, because I sure am ready for some Carnage.