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Review of Venom: The Last Dance (Dan Deacon/Various)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... for a serviceable and generally agreeable score for the concept, Dan Deacon playing the genre safe with a decent narrative that achieves a few tonal highlights.

Avoid it... if you lament the total loss of consistency across the three scores comprising the Venom sub-franchise to this point, nothing surviving from the prior entries in this sequel.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Venom: The Last Dance: (Dan Deacon/Various) Fulfilling the three-film contract guiding the Venom offshoot of Sony's Spider-Man Universe, the 2024 sequel Venom: The Last Dance concludes the story of Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote. In the process of achieving some destiny for Venom and Brock, the movie introduces a new villain out there in the universe, Knull, responsible for the creation of the symbiotes that plague Earth and eying a return to power. The plotline of this third movie deals with his attempt to receive a power from the death of either Venom or Brock to assist in this evil plan. A nasty accomplice of this cranky baddie is a lizard/arachnid hybrid of immense size, otherwise known as a Xenophage, that is the kind of thing kids have nightmares about seeing emerge from the hole at the bottom of their toilets while sitting on them. And then there are the human soldiers of Imperium who are getting involved in the symbiote phenomenon for better or worse. By the end of this tale, the whole point is to see a bunch of human and symbiote combinations in battles against ugly, undesirable creatures that need eliminated. Critics found little point to Venom: The Last Dance though audiences provided some moderate responses to perhaps salvage the franchise for another day. With Kelly Marcel coming aboard as director for this entry, so too did her collaborator, composer Dan Deacon, an American electronic musician who has increasing dabbled in mainstream film scoring during the 2020's. While his prior film music certainly did not earn much of a mainstream spotlight, Venom: The Last Dance accomplishes exactly that. He takes the opportunity to devise a score that resembles a safely conservative product that any such emerging composer would devise to bolster credentials for that attention. In other words, it's a score that focuses on not screwing up. With the help of a massive crew of support, Deacon further broadens his palette and writes a score with a surprisingly conventional orchestral base to coincide with his comfortable synthetic tendencies. There's absolutely nothing special about Deacon's approach to the score, but, on the other hand, it's a perfectly serviceable and workmanlike genre entry nestled amongst a handful of songs. While there are challenging passages of atonal muck, the entirety of the work provides more than adequate depth for the narrative on screen and is actually quite listenable on its own.

The balance between synthetics and orchestra in Venom: The Last Dance is fine, with expected distortion during suspense and action. On the difficult end, there are mutated foghorn blasts of stupidity in "Sky Dive" and sheer noise in "Frequent Flyers," but some synthetically dominated cues, as in "Request Permission" are non-offensive. The handling of the orchestra's strings and brass is highly conventional for the genre, with a few tonal moments of interest shining through. The role of voices in the work is intriguing, with whispering vocal layers of dissonance at start of "Knull's Order" and middle of "Hanging Out at the Waterfall" providing suspense but lovely solo female voice and ensemble making some sparing appearances later for attractive fantasy. The thematic narrative of the score is fairly decent, but no themes carry over from Ludwig Göransson's 2018 music for Venom or Marco Beltrami's more stylish 2021 score for Venom: Let There Be Carnage. (The lack of a prominent role for Beltrami's bluesy theme for the two main characters during the opening bar scene here is a disappointment.) In the middle of the score there are several almost completely aimless filler moments that don't advance the thematic narrative ("Ramping Up," "Strickland and Paine," "General Bosco Banana Man," "Safer Underground," "Poking Around"), and the final set of cues doesn't really offer any satisfying climax or conclusion, leaving the album hanging. That said, there are two primary themes and one secondary one that are all related in structure in Deacon's strategy, and they do their job well enough to carry the score. Not surprisingly, the Xenophage and Knull characters receive a common motif that largely dominates in memory. It's a four-note idea meandering around a restricted range, often stomping, grinding, and snarling on brass and synthetics. In its employment as a cyclical device, it is all over this score, almost too ubiquitous at times. This villain identity in Venom: The Last Dance is introduced in the bass at 0:16 into "Knull's Order" and achieves its cyclical form for the whole cue. It turns deceptively optimistic in that cyclical movement at the outset of "Area 51 to 55" and informs the chopping string rhythms of "Venom and Eddie at the River," eventually coming into better focus. The theme menaces "Newsflash" in shades until announcing itself at the end of the cue, explodes with massive force at the start of "Lab Battle," toils with the legacy theme in "Remember Me," and threatens in the obnoxious crescendo of "Say When."

The villain theme in Venom: The Last Dance achieves its pinnacle when choral reverence defines it in "Phoning Home," building power over the course of its most impactful cue. Secondary phrasing is finally revealed for the motif in the latter half of this passage of villain's triumph. The theme creeps into "Crashing the Party" and "Blasting Out" but largely diminishes from there. Meanwhile, Deacon's vaguely superhero-like theme (encompassing the Venom symbiote, Eddie, and Imperium) starts with the same progressions as the villain motif but ascends with some hope from there. This positive idea is highlighted in its prettiest and most heroic form on brass at 0:31 into "Area 51 to 55," utilizing percussion and chugging strings to yield a fairly standard but well executed moment. The lines of the melody are passed between players in somewhat obtuse ways, though, and the composer consolidates the theme better at 1:36 with female vocal accents providing a nice accompaniment. The hero theme struggles against the villains' distortion in first half of "Hanging Out at the Waterfall" and mingles with that villain identity in the tumult at 0:58 into "Lab Battle" before retrieving its form on strings and brass at 2:09. It offers some phrasing behind the legacy theme in "Remember Me," turns slightly twangy in fragments on guitars in the unique diversion of "Desert Walk," and becomes a bit grim early in "Strickland Reprimands Paine." The hero theme floats its chord progressions through the slightly uplifting "Sneaking Around," twists into several layers of malice in "What Are You Doing Here," and is tortured in tonal agony at the outset of "Phoning Home," where it tries hard to interject later. Deacon fails to provide closure to this theme at the end of the score, its progressions faint at the ends of "Crashing the Party" and "Poking Around" while brass attempts unsuccessfully to wrestle it for purpose in "Last Try" and "It's a Showdown." Finally, a legacy theme exists as an extension of the hero material but addressing fantasy in a new stylistic direction. It offers the most palatable material for extended periods in the score, developed with choral and orchestral majesty in "Remember Me" before taking a darker, more synthetic approach in "Explaining the Backstory" and interrupting suddenly and mystically on synths at 1:01 into "It's Not Safe Here." In the end, Deacon handles in Venom: The Last Dance reasonably well but without much memorability. On album the score runs shy of an hour, and the duo of "Area 51 to 55" and "Remember Me" could represent a strong ten-minute suite of highlights. The Venom sub-franchise has never achieved consistency in its tone or themes, however, which remains a frustrating disappointment.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 57:29

• 1. Knull's Order (1:24) • 2. Area 51 to 55 (2:35) • 3. Venom and Eddie at the River (1:52) • 4. Hanging Out at the Waterfall (2:04) • 5. Newsflash (1:45) • 6. Lab Battle (3:27) • 7. Remember Me (8:13) • 8. Sky Dive (0:38) • 9. Desert Walk (0:38) • 10. Frequent Flyers (0:45) • 11. Strickland Reprimands Paine (1:48) • 12. Sneaking Around (1:04) • 13. What Are You Doing Here (2:18) • 14. Request Permission (0:59)

• 15. Say When (3:41) • 16. Phoning Home (4:39) • 17. Ramping Up (1:19) • 18. Strickland and Paine (2:23) • 19. General Bosco Banana Man (1:03) • 20. Explaining the Backstory (5:39) • 21. Crashing the Party (0:45) • 22. Following the Osprey (0:49) • 23. Safer Underground (0:47) • 24. Poking Around (1:38) • 25. Blasting Out (1:11) • 26. It's Not Safe Here (1:57) • 27. Last Try (0:58) • 28. It's a Showdown (1:08)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for this album.

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