Venom is no longer just a projectile poison ejaculated by pissed off reptiles, nor is it “simply” the sentient alien lifeform that once acted as Spider-Man’s black and white costume only to bond with a guy with a vendetta against the wall crawler to create his brain-eating nemesis, but a 2005 slasher flick that tries to be a little different from your everyday “hot teens die violent deaths” brand of ‘90s waste by-product. Sure, the kids are your cookie-cutter cast of small town southern high school seniors working at burger joints, engaging in not-so-legal activities, “hooking up” with each other and stumbling through romance, trying to keep up their car payments and dreaming of a successful stint at NYU in the fall, but their lazy summer is about to be ruined thanks to a redneck toe-truck driver whose act of good will comes back to, well, “bite him”.
Trust me, that was a bad pun that will just seem worse when it’s explained. As such, allow me now to explain!
Most slashers these days are basic, run-of-the-mill psychos with an ax (or machete, or cleaver, or hook) to grind or they just plain hate a specific group of people, more often than not the young MTV group… for which I don’t think any of us can really blame them, right? Whether they’re out for revenge or just projecting their personal issues, we as a viewership get shafted by these stab happy, uninspired doppelgangers four or five times a year if not more. Sure, there are the occasional exceptions that make these “it could happen (and sometimes does)” madmen work (Wolf Creek anyone?), but for the most part they’re disposable. So, what do you do when you want something a little more interesting than a guy in dirty overalls with a chainsaw for the umpteenth time? Well, if you’re Flint Dille and John Platten, the first thing you do is… change your names. The second thing you do though is… stop writing movies and stick to writing videogames. But, if you can’t do either of those right, the third thing you do is give your killer a mystical twist, whether it be based on legends, mythology, voodoo or HP Lovecraft. Dille and Platten opted for the third, so we wound up with Venom.
Ray is the small, unassuming town’s local mechanic, gas station attendant/owner and toe-truck driver. He’s got a bastard son who’s ashamed of him (and not just because he’s a deadbeat dad), the local teens mock him openly or piss themselves in terror when he’s around, and nobody treats him the respect a gas pumping redneck deserves. One night, while crossing one of the only two bridges in town, Ray accidentally wrecks an old voodoo lady and sends her car teetering precariously over the side. He pulls her to safety, but when she mumbles something about her trunk, Ray tries to retrieve it from the backseat of the auto before it goes crashing into the river. While wrestling with the luggage, the box pops open and Ray is attacked repeatedly by a number of computer generated snakes none too happy to be so damn computer generated. The car goes over the side and a couple of teens, who had a small part in the accident, call the authorities. Ray is found dead, half drowned and half embalmed in snake venom and taken to the city morgue along with the old voodoo lady whose heart gave out.
Of course this isn’t the end though, as the coroner who was handling Ray’s autopsy, along with the two cops who originally pulled his deformed corpse out of the river (one of which is played by Method Man of the “under appreciated” television art project known as “Method & Red”) are all discovered dead and Ray’s body no longer taking up space on a slab in the county meat locker. The rest of the movie is spent with Ray (being referred to by his new evil voodoo killer name of “Mr. Jangles”) killing off the pretty young things of this backwoods Louisiana town in ritual sacrifices. It seems the snakes that bit Ray were part of a voodoo ritual done by the old priestess lady that redeems the spirits of evil men after their deaths. When murderers, rapists and corporate executives are laid to rest, their souls cannot go on until the evil is leeched from their aura, done so by the snakes which are placed into their graves and retrieved from the ground following their deed, then placed in a suitcase until they can be disposed of properly. Of course, these snakes didn’t get the proper disposal treatment as we all know now and instead barfed all that evil into the otherwise mild-mannered and non-violent Ray, transforming him into an undead juggernaut whose very nature now consists of pissing on flowers, kicking puppies and sacrificing peoples’ souls to avenge all the mistreated evil now inside him. Got it? Good.
The kids’ only hope is Cece, the granddaughter of the voodoo priestess who just happens to be fairly well practiced in the Creole ways of juju and hoodoo and may have an idea of how to stop this killer super zombie before he can kill off all her friends. But, will her grandmother’s house (blessed with good magic, protected from evil, etc.), a necklace mad of chicken bones and a little full-sized voodoo doll action be enough to stand up to Mr. J’s various implements of automotive repair, now perverted for the more evil purposes of evisceration and death dealing? I don’t know, if you put me in a fight and gave me the choice of a chicken bone necklace and some “magic” powder or a crowbar and a tow hook, I’d probably go with the pointy metal things…
There are two things that save this movie: violence and originality. I can't say I've seen this "killer injected with the violent souls of criminals thanks to voodoo snakes" angle before, and that appeals to me over a simple "loser kills the girl who spurned him at the junior prom" bullshit plot any and every day of this or any other week. Yay for voodoo, it's not used enough. Venom is no Zombies of Sugar Hill, but what is, right? The gore was slippery and painful to watch, also good. Beyond that, everything else was, to use my favorite cliche, cookie-cutter. Stupid teenagers with the same law breaking, pre-marital sex, high school romance crap that's been shoveled into our clamp-held maws for years. Barf. Watch it for the double 'v' ('voodoo' and 'violence') and give the rest away to charity, because there are starving kids in Ethiopia who don't have crappy movies to watch when they can't get a date on a Saturday night.
