DEEP IN THE MARVEL SEPTIC TANK............"VENOM"

Venom (2018)   BQ searched for an appropriate metaphor to describe what it's like watching a film like this........

                    Dumpster diving?

                    Septic Tank cleaning?

                    Toilet flushing right after a bout of explosive diarrhea?

                     Feel free to pick one, or come up with your own. The only method I've found to endure something like "Venom" and still retain a smidgen of sanity.........search for at least one shining light in the dark, dark morass of CGI........

                     In this movie, I suppose it's Tom Hardy's portrayal of a scruffy reporter infected with an alien parasite.......it turns him into a super-powered monster with a lot of teeth, a Gene Simmons tongue and an insatiable need to bite people's heads off......literally.

                     Hardy's on the right track, trying desperately to wring some comedic subtext out of this junk, but he gets no help at all from the director and 3 screenwriters........they're too far gone, up to their necks in the Marvel Universe quicksand.......

                     And that, of course, means lots of human beings and cars tossed around in the air with minimal attention to the laws of gravity and actual physical damage........

                    Other than Hardy's semi-satiric mumbling, the rest of "Venom"s worthless........it can't even meet the low bar set for superhero movies.  The villains are complete non-entities......it looks like the real actors for these parts never showed up and they just used the stand-ins.......

                      If you stick it out for the usual, interminable credit crawl, the film does reveal a major star as Hardy's next opponent......in the...(pardon me while I gag)......sequel.

                      Also depressing.......seeing one of BQ's faves, the incredibly gifted Michelle Williams wasting her time in one of those throwaway, thankless "girlfriend" roles. (The dopey filmmakers take no advantage of having a world-class actress in their midst........they treat her like she's Megan Fox)

                       I'll give Tom Hardy 1/2 a star for his tireless efforts to offer up a brief chuckle or two (especially in his self-voiced bickering with his alien pal, like a pissed off ventriloquist with a rogue dummy)........but you can only sit for so long and watch this poor guy tread water in a pool of excrement.  The rest of it......a genuine AFH......an ABOMINATION FROM HELL.....