Venom reviews prompt VERY low Rotten Tomatoes score: ‘Chaotic and noisy’, ‘a mess’, ‘weak’

The Tom Hardy-fronted film started generating negative buzz yesterday when the embargo lifted on reviewers tweeting out their opinions.

Now that the full reviews have been published, the Rotten Tomatoes score is out – and it’s not good at all.

Venom has a lowly 28% aggregated score, at time of writing – and a score of 33 on Metacritic. For reference, that’s lower than the widely panned Johnny English Strikes Again (35%), which is also out this week.

Both are subject to change as more reviews are published in the lead-up to its US release on Friday, but the early signs are certainly not what bosses would have hoped for.

GQ said in a particularly negative post: “When a major fight scene resembles a pair of black pants caught in a white wash, it’s fair to say you haven’t taken the audience with you.”

The Telegraph quipped in a scathing one-star review: “Sony Pictures appear to have lavished a nine-figure sum on, and are now hoping to establish an entire cinematic universe on the back of, a character who looks like someone drizzled with Creme Egg filling onto a bin bag.”

The Hollywood Reporter added: “A significant problem in a film full of them is that Eddie comes off as a dope, an eager dufus hardly convincing as a boundary-pushing journo or someone who can out-think a titan of technology.”

And the Los Angeles Times claimed the motion picture just “feels like pretty weak poison”.

Entertainment Weekly gave a C+ grade and said: “It never rises above bombastic and busy – which is something I never thought I’d say about a movie starring three aces like Hardy, Ahmed, and Williams.”

And on a slightly more positive note, Tribune News Service said: “It’s a mess, but wow, is it ever a fun, fascinating mess.”

For The Guardian, another one-star review was published – with the verdict being that the film is “poisonously dull”.

Digital Spy gave two stars, reasoning: “Poor, talented Michelle Williams is given the thankless task of the film’s resident girlfriend. Anne is a lawyer, allegedly, but her chief role is to grope for any sort of chemistry with Hardy, an ultimately doomed endeavour.

“At one point she says to Eddie, ‘I’m sorry about Venom’ – it’s meant to be in sympathy, but could just as easily be directed to the audience, or herself.”

Here on Express.co.uk, a two-star critique was published.

Our reviewer said: “The main problem with Venom isn’t that Hardy seems to think he’s acting in a light-hearted tongue-in-cheek affair, or that the film is pretty boring throughout. It’s the fact that it’s just so unnecessary.

“Venom has nothing new to offer to the genre. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it’s plain old ‘meh’.

“A film that feels like what you’d expect from a below average superhero flick circa 2004, like Ghost Rider or Fantastic Four.”

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus reads: “Venom’s first standalone movie turns out to be like the comics character in all the wrong ways – chaotic, noisy, and in desperate need of a stronger attachment to Spider-Man.”

Venom is out now in the UK.