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There is an air of apathy around “Venom: The Last Dance.” In everything from the performances to the design, it feels like a movie that everyone is simply resigned to making; a film that, contractually, is supposed to happen. The filmmakers are not so much creating as they are showing up to work.

Perhaps that’s overly cynical. Perhaps writer/director Kelly Marcel, who has been involved in all three films about the goopy symbiote, is truly passionate about this final chapter. I think I’m giving her credit, then, by ascribing the film’s problems to apathy. If it’s not apathy, it’s incompetence.

Because “The Last Dance” fails to boil over. Its predecessors, 2018’s “Venom” and 2021’s “Let There Be Carnage,” are no classics, but they rose to a serviceable level on the strength of a strong and committed lead performance by Tom Hardy (who also seems half engaged in this chapter). But “The Last Dance” neglects to settle on a plot, let alone a tone. Like many unfortunate superhero movies, it is only compelling when cool stuff is happening; when it attempts to have a point, it wobbles and falls.

On the run after the events of “Let There Be Carnage” — and recently returned from a brief and uneventful sojourn in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Eddie Brock and Venom (Hardy) are determined to clear their names. That goal, for unclear reasons, requires a road trip to New York; the alien/human pair set off on a cross-country road of mishaps.

That’s not actually the point, however, insofar as there is a point. The actual problem concerns an ancient villain named Knull (Andy Serkis), who’s trying to free himself from a cosmic prison and destroy the universe. Venom functions as an intergalactic macguffin for Knull’s goal, so the bad guy sends an army of snarling monsters to Earth to pursue our anti-hero.

Then there’s the bit about Area 51 being shut down, and the subplot about the extraterrestrial-obsessed hippie family, and the high-minded scientist (Juno Temple) with the tragic backstory, and half a dozen other symbiotes, and the diversion to Vegas (complete with the titular dance sequence).

There might have been other subplots as well. I kinda stopped keeping track.

When Venom absorbs a horse and tears across the desert, something resembling a movie briefly ensues. For the most part, though, it’s like watching scattered scenes of a television show you’re not following. It’s not the worst movie this universe has produced — we are theoretically in the same timeline as “Madame Web,” after all — but it serves no purpose.

My Rating: 3/10

“Venom: The Last Dance” is now playing in theaters.