Morbius

  • Title: Morbius
  • IMDb: link

Huh. Morbius doesn’t even get to be the out of control vampire in his own film. That’s certainly a choice. As with Blade: Trinity, Morbius has the distinction of being simultaneously bad across two genres. Jared Leto stars (a phrase one should always be leery of) as Dr. Michael Morbius obsessed with curing his blood disease, and that of his closest friend (Matt Smith), by using vampire bats. As batty, so to speak, as that sounds, Morbius’ experiments work and cure him of his debilitating disease but do leave him with a few unexpected side-effects.

The cast is rounded out by Adria Arjona as Morbius’ assistant, Jared Harris as an old friend to both Leto and Smith’s characters, and Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal cops as clueless and incompetent as any law enforcement agent not named John McClane in Die Hard.

The film is a spin-off of Sony’s current rights of Spider-Man but the movie, other than using a Spidey-adjacent character, does nothing to fit into the world created in any of the Spider-Man films other than the definition of a tacked-on scene at the end that I’m guessing was written without any knowledge of the rest of the plot as it makes no sense with what comes before.

As a horror film, Morbius isn’t that interesting as a mad scientist and quickly gets upstaged by Smith’s character who honestly doesn’t even need to be included here. He’s our unnecessary Abomination (I know Marvel Studios will like that reference as apparently nothing is so cool these days as trying to reminding people of The Incredible Hulk). The effects are passable, but there’s no thrills or chills here (necessary for even the most blasé of vampire flicks). And the half-developed love story dies on-screen. Even for such a D-list character, Morbius is a waste.

Watch the trailer