A Reel Review: MORBIUS

For complicated legal reasons, the kids at Sony Pictures own the rights to several of Marvel’s super-villains and heroes. When they decide to play nice and let the mighty Marvel Studios help them, we get cinematic magic such as SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME from last year (which is still making box office dollars after three months). But when Sony is left on their own, we get hot messes such as VENOM faking their way as Marvel. Here in 2022, the children are back at play, on their own with MORBIUS, the living vampire. 

 

Doctor Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), a brilliant doctor who endeavors to cure his own debilitating blood disease, fuses his DNA with the DNA of vampire bats, which grants him deadly powers. 

 

Directed by Daniel Espinosa, MORBIUS is an origin story of the character and not much else. Dr. Morbius has been suffering from the disease his whole life alongside his best friend Milo (Matt Smith), and looks to cure them both. Once his vampire-powers kick in, he needs blood to survive or else he withers back to his old, crippled self. Once Milo figures this out he takes the new serum himself (how he does this by himself is not explained), and has no issues with taking blood from people to feed himself (Morbius himself conveniently sticks with blood bags). 

 

Working on getting MORBIUS off the ground is all the movie is good for. The film feels extremely rushed; Morbius gains his abilities quickly, which he learns quickly, and Milo is off and running with fangs before we have time to digest what happened. The script is paper-thin with no depth whatsoever, and overall feels bland and by-the-numbers. At only 104 minutes, the film feels like a pilot episode for a TV show. 

 

Director Daniel Espinoza puts together some decent action scenes, including one or two that feel like they came out of a straight-up horror film. The CGI is overdone during the fight scenes, although the effects used to make Morbius go from nearly emaciated to muscular are very well done. The script is often too blunt with characters exclaiming to the world what they’re about to do, which feels like a shortcut in the film’s rush to get to the finish line. MORBIUS also shows no shame in borrowing from other places. The facial-disfigurements on the vampires are right out of TV’S BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, and Jon Ekstrand’s score lifts music-cues from BATMAN BEGINS (2005). 

 

Acting is mixed. Jared Leto does fine with the very little he is given to work with, but has no room to stretch. Matt Smith gets to play a little unhinged and it’s a delight. Adria Arjona comes in as a fellow doctor and love interest and is very good. Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal appear as FBI men investigating all the blood-drained bodies they keep finding, who are both useless and accomplish so little in the film they feel like they are in there to pad the running time. Jared Harris also stars and is under-utilized. 

 

For the duration of MORBIUS, the character is a good person who clings to his ethics, and wants only to heal and not kill. But in true Sony Pictures dumbass fashion, all that is thrown out and contradicted with not one, but two post-credit scenes that are awkward, clumsy, and flat-out stupid. Both scenes are living proof of what happens when the adults leave the room. If it says Sony Pictures, then it’s a fake Marvel movie. 

 

BOTTOM LINE: Fuck it