Movie Review: 'Morbius' is the Disaster We All Expected it to Be

Morbius is pretty much the mess that everyone has been predicting since it was announced that the famed Marvel vampire anti-hero was headed to the big screen. Starring Jared Leto, this lurid monster movie fails in many ways but most abundantly as a way of introducing Morbius to Sony’s bargain bin version of the MCU. Who is Michael Morbius? What is his motivation? What is his relationship with Spider-Man? Who the heck knows? I’ve seen this movie and I am more confused than ever.

The story of Michael Morbius begins in childhood. Michael is a sickly young child in the care of a kind doctor, Dr Emil Nicholas (Jared Harris). Michael has a rare blood disorder, one he shares with his roommate, Lucius (Matt Smith), though, for reasons never explained, Michael calls Lucius, Milo and the name sticks. Michael, apparently, cynically and rather rudely, calls all of his neighbors Milo as they don’t tend to stick around long enough for him to learn their names.

This could be a cute character trait, Michael’s comic cynicism, but Jared Leto drops this particular aspect of Michael’s personality in favor of giving the character no personality whatsoever. Thankfully, both Michael and Milo live through their childhood and become adults with rare blood disorders that are slowly killing them. Michael has become Dr. Michael Morbius and through his plot found genius, he’s managed to invent a blood substitute that has kept people like himself and Milo alive for years past their expected dates with death.

As the plot kicks in, Michael has a new idea, he believes he can harness the rare genetics of the Vampire bat to allow people with his condition to be able to create new blood cells and thus healthy blood cells. Unfortunately, the necessary experiment to make this happen is incredibly dangerous and not exactly legal. It’s so illegal and dangerous in fact, that the nouveau riche Milo, is asked to buy Michael a trip to international waters with a group of thugs in order to carry out the experiment.

The experiment is a success… sort of… not really. Michael turns himself into a vampire. Whoops! The experiment ends with Michael murdering all of the thugs on the ship in international waters, nearly killing his girlfriend/assistant, Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), before leaping off the ship to try and hide his shameful series of murders. Returning to the mainland and to his lab, Michael finds that slowly but surely, he is cured but his need for blood is growing more dire and is causing him to crave human blood more than ever.

That’s a solid thumbnail sketch of the plot of Morbius and a wise film watcher such as yourself, dear reader, can work out the math as to where this is headed. Matt Smith wasn’t cast in Morbius to simply do nothing so, naturally, he also takes Michael’s ‘cure’ and becomes the film’s big bad. Dr. Bancroft survives her time on the ship and also returns and winds up at the center of Michael and Milo’s battle between good and evil and a pair of FBI Agents, played by Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal, banter, fill time, and serve little function.

Morbius is a complete disaster from beginning to end and it starts with the casting of Jared Leto. I don’t think Jared Leto is a bad actor but he doesn’t really know how to have fun on screen. Leto is a consistently dour presence even in roles that are meant to be energetic or exciting. His Dr. Morbius isn’t exactly meant to be the life of the party but he brings zero charisma to the role. Leto is well built and has great cheekbones but he has so little energy, so little life in his eyes that the character of Morbius is somehow rendered boring.

A man with the powers of a vampire is boring. How do you make this character boring? It’s baffling and yet, the evidence is on screen, Leto’s performance is legitimately boring. That fact is underlined by the performance of former Doctor Who star Matt Smith who’s performance may not be great but it’s not boring. I will say that some of the over the top theatrics in Smith’s performance are a little embarrassing, the costume designers do him no favors by dressing him like an evil version of his Doctor Who, but at the very least, Smith is energetic and fully engaged, unlike Leto who looks like he could use several Red Bulls and enema to get things going.

A lot seems to happen in the 104 minutes of Morbius but nothing sticks in the memory. The movie seems to happen in a vacuum, things happen and are completely forgotten minutes later. There is no tension, no suspense, scenes arrive, happen and are forgotten as quickly as they occur. Nothing adds up to anything memorable or important. The ending arrives in more confusion than anything else. A pair of post-credits scenes seem to introduce Michael Keaton’s villainous character, The Vulture, but why he’s related to Morbius in any way is deeply unclear.

Is Morbius a hero? Is he becoming a villain? If he’s becoming a villain, why? What would cause that because, other than murdering a few villainous thugs, Morbius doesn’t do anything particularly villainous in Morbius. In fact, he heroically works to stop people from being killed by Milo and seeks a way to keep himself from becoming a killer. Also why does Michael Morbius care about Spider-Man or Vulture’s interest in Spider-Man? It’s all a complete mystery jammed into about four minutes of screen time.

I’m sure there are comic book lovers reading this who are capable of filling in the blanks but I don’t care. It’s not in the movie, the explanations aren’t on screen and I am not interested in having to pick up a comic book to make this movie make sense. I have no doubt that the comic book version of Morbius is far more interesting than this movie version of the character but that, based on this movie, is a very low bar.

Morbius debuted in theaters nationwide on April 1st, 2022.