Venom (DVD)
Venom comes from Kevin Williamson of Scream fame and director Jim Gillespie (I Know What You Did Last Summer) and as Williamson touts in the making-of featurette he was hoping to create a franchise character, a la Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. He succeeded in look, forgot the scares and the story isn't anything to brag about. This isn't to say that A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th are scary, but you can't deny the entertainment value of the earlier titles in the two franchises and they both had a fun premise.
In Venom our Big Bag Voodoo Daddy is created thanks to the bite of a supposedly possessed snake that somehow gives our baddie a yearning for a murderous rampage. Something I am sure any disgruntled postal worker can relate to, but audience members are going to have a hard time being convinced as to what really motivates this guy.
So he sets out to kill all the small town cuties along with the unfortunate police officer played by Method Man. The tale swirls and swirls down the drain until it finally ends with... get this... a chance at a sequel. A sequel that will, if made, only be found in video stores, that is if we could be so unlucky.
Besides having a bunch of hotties getting slaughtered, Venom is an absolute waste of time, especially since none of those hotties give us what the horror movies of the '80s did. Whatever happened to the big breasted woman that runs around topless until the killer gets her anyway? Didn't anyone hear the rules laid out by Jamie Kennedy in Scream?
Venom is a film that never should have seen theaters. It can pass as a direct-to-video release (barely), but to spend anymore money than a rental fee on this one is a waste of money, and you may be asking for a refund on that rental charge.