Venom 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Venom 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 18, 2018

Comic book villains have largely played foils in Superhero films rather than be portrayed as the subjects of a movie. While there are instances where villains have stolen the show or played an expanded role in a picture or even appeared in the title of a film, it's pretty much always been the good guys who take top billing. Things change with Venom, Director Ruben Fleischer's (Zombieland) stab at turning the Superhero film over to a (generally speaking) "bad guy." Fleischer and Writers Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel ultimately present Venom as a gray-area anti-hero and with a humorous streak for the black-clad symbiote rather than risking what might have been a more rewarding push to darker and perhaps even R-rated territory. The end result is a standardized, seemingly watered down film that plays for the widest possible audience rather than exploring more interesting and off-the-beaten-path avenues for one of Marvel's more compelling characters.

Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a popular and aggressive investigative reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area. His latest assignment tasks him with interviewing Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), a brilliant scientific mind and head of the Life Foundation. Drake is a believer in space travel, in discovering the untapped resources and potential the universe beyond Earth’s borders has to offer mankind. His latest mission into space ends in disaster when the ship crashes back to Earth. The ship was carrying several alien symbiotes, three of which are recovered, one of which remains on the loose. When Brock uses the interview as a front to confront Drake about rumors that his empire has been built on dead bodies and underhanded and unethical scientific methods, he is escorted from the premises, fired from his job, and his girlfriend Anne (Michelle Williams) breaks up with him. She, too has been fired from her job for failing to keep confidential material from him.

Months later, sulking in his unemployment, Brock is approached by one of Drake’s employees who reveals to him the truth behind the operation, that the poor and uneducated are being used in Brock’s laboratory research with no regard for their well-being. With no other direction to take his life, he risks what little he has left to infiltrate Drake’s operation. Brock learns that Drake’s ultimate plan is to cross humans with alien symbiotes to propel man’s ability to exist off planet, a planet that is dying from pollution and overpopulation. When one of the aliens inhabits Brock's body, he experiences radical changes: excess body heat, ravenous hunger, increased physical agility, and he hears a voice in his head that becomes ever more prominent in defining who he is. All of it eventually manifests into a hideous alien façade capable of frightening acts of body morphing and lethal attacks. As Brock comes to terms with the symbiote inside, Venom/Brock find themselves on the run from Drake's men and another symbiote more powerful than Venom.

Venom is not the first film about aliens inhabiting a human host, and several others have done it better, including The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There is of course plenty of opportunity for interesting character analysis as Eddie falls into the clutches of the symbiotic relationship building inside of him. But rather than unearth the dark and sinister realities, the film instead aims to be as hip as possible, to voice Venom with attitude and task Tom Hardy with hamming up many of the responses to the fight within. Essentially, the film wants Venom to be Spider-Man rather than Venom. Its greatest influence seems to be Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3, not because Venom appears in that movie but because it's the most brash and playful of the three. Tom Hardy doesn't quite seem to know what to do with the part, seeming equally confused as the audience as he never really gets the journalist Eddie character off the ground and struggles to find the proper beat and cadence for inhabited Eddie. Rather than work hard to deal with the war raging inside, Hardy and the script gloss over the more complex components in favor of humor and action built around stock parts and a transparent story that becomes even more so as the film develops its tone and finds its voice.

Venom 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date.

Venom was digitally photographed, primarily at a resolution of 2.8K and finished at 2K, unsurprising given the digital roots and effects-heavy picture. The UHD looks terrific even upscaled and offers a solid boost over the Blu-ray, a sharper, clearer, cleaner image in every way. The digital source photography shines on the UHD, enjoying a razor-sharpness and near filmic qualities that the Blu-ray cannot quite achieve, evident throughout the film but perhaps most obvious in well lit and dense scenes. A good shot for comparison comes near film's end in chapter 16 with Anne and Eddie sitting on a doorstep, the hilly San Francisco landscape around them. The UHD reveals tack-sharp details on pavement, structures, and cars, not to mention a healthy increase in clarity when the scene shifts from a broad location overview to more intimate facial portraits. The increase in clarity is not astronomical, but it is critical in terms of extracting the absolute best case scenario texturing and intimacy for the home video presentation. Even the digital effects in darker scenes manage to find another gear of clarity and complexity, revealing some of the finer details with more definition and distinction than the Blu-ray can provide.

The Dolby Vision color enhancement yields an impressive depth and distinction over its SDR Blu-ray counterpart. Skin tones are firmer, clothing hues appear more finely revealing, and the colorfully diverse array of items in a convenience store that appears in several scenes in the film enjoy more robust splash, even under the harsh fluorescent lighting which is more stabilized and less garish on UHD. Brights are shinier and more brilliant. Black levels are deep and pure, and the Venom digital effects, a combination of inky, black reflective coloring and contrasting whites, look terrific, finding a much more sinister and revealing coloring on the UHD that, combined with the increase in sharpness and digital revelation, make this hands-down the finest way to watch the film. Noise management is improved and as with the Blu-ray there are no other source or encode artifacts of note. This is a very good example of a 2K upscale digitally-sourced new release improving on the Blu-ray and highlighting the format's capabilities.

Venom 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Venom's Dolby Atmos soundtrack comes as close as most will ever get to joining with a symbiote. The track offers little core change from the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack, maintaining the terrifically large, seamless spacing, the wonderful instrumental and effect clarity, and the prodigious bass. The added surround and overhead channels offer additional opportunity for more fluid sound movement and precise positioning, two components the track embraces throughout. Whether mundane sound effects like communication emanating via overhead speaker in chapter eight or more prominent action effects that encircle and saturate the listener such as when Eddie/Venom flees from Drake's henchmen in a key action scene partway through the movie, Venom's track encircles and envelops the listener with a tight, precise grasp that never relents. The added fill makes not a huge difference compared to the 5.1 track but an appreciable one to be sure. Combined with the exacting instrumental and effects clarity, the prodigious bass, and the reference dialogue delivery (which includes a greater sense of expansion around and above the listener when "Venom voice" speaks), this ranks as one of the better Atmos tracks on the market.

Venom 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Venom's UHD disc contains one supplement, a sneak peek at Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse (2160p, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, 3:34), which is also tacked onto the end of the movie and is also on the Blu-ray. All other supplements, listed below, can be found on the bundled Blu-ray. A Movies Anywhere digital copy code is included with purchase. The release ships with a non-embossed slipcover.

• Venom Mode (1080p, 1:52:08): Per the description on the disc: "When selecting this mode the feature will engage informative pop-ups throughout the film to provide insight on the movie's relationship to the comics, and to reveal hidden references that even a seasoned Venom-fan may have missed!" Rather than something like Retribution Mode from Equalizer 2, which featured cuts into the movie for commentary and behind-the-scenes footage, this is basically a glorified trivia track. White text appears on the screen within a gooey near-black Venom-like substance.
• Deleted & Extended Scenes (1080p): Inclides Ride to Hospital (1:23), Car Alarm (0:35), and San Quentin Extended (3:11).
• From Symbiote to Screen (1080p, 20:03): An interesting discussion about the character's popularity, place in comic history, changes in character origin from comic to screen, why the film remains grounded in Marvel mythology and storytelling structure, cast and performances, the character's hero/villain duality, Carnage's cameo in the film, and more.
• The Anti-Hero (1080p, 10:01): A closer look at how Eddie and Venom turn into reluctant heroes through the course of the story, grounded in the character's comic history, and independent of Spider-Man. It also looks at the production and its history.
• The Lethal Protector in Action (1080p, 9:14): A focused piece on the film's action scenes, fight choreography, and stunt work.
• Venom Vision (1080p, 7:02): A closer look at Ruben Fleischer's work as director.
• Designing Venom (1080p, 5:34): A quick exploration of the character's design for the film, grounded in the comics, which have altered his appearance over the years.
• Symbiote Secrets (1080p, 2:40): A quick exploration of a few of the easter eggs hidden in the film.
• Select Scenes Pre-Vis (1080p, 13:53 total runtime): Animated storyboards for several scenes. Included are Carlton Drake Lab Test, Escape from the Foundation, Eddie's Checkup, Eddie's Apartment Fight, Bike Chase, Tower Climb, Lobby Fight, and Dog Venom.
• Music Videos (1080p): Included are Venom by Eminem (4:56) and Sunflower by Post Malone, Swae Lee 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' (2:48).
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Sneak Peek (1080p, 3:34): A scene from the new animated film. Also tacked onto the end of the movie.
• Previews (1080p): Additional Sony titles.

Venom 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Venom is a little long and laborious (though 20 minutes of the listed runtime are comprised of credits, a mid-credits universe-building scene, and a preview for Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse). The film is well made otherwise, boasting incredibly impressive digital effects and good action scenes, but it falls flat as a character piece. Sony's UHD is first-rate. The picture is striking, the Atmos audio is absolutely immersive, and there is no shortage of extra content. Recommended.