MOVIE REVIEW – Jared Leto stars in his second superhero movie, and unfortunately for him, the film is another flop. This time, it’s not Leto’s fault, but the script, which is so simple it could be used as a stake through a vampire’s heart.

Sony executives may have thought they would like their own ‘Batman’ – at least the ‘living vampire’, Marvel’s Morbius, has a close relationship with blood-sucking bats. Unfortunately, this “Batman” is not that Batman, and although Jared Leto is now good as the terminally ill doctor who becomes a vampire “out of necessity” and the actors, the vision and the action, in general, are all good, the story is so anaemic that it’s as if a starving vampire has sucked every last drop out of it.

The complaints of poor little children

The story of Morbius commits its first deer mistake in that it tires the viewer with an overlong and terribly clichéd introduction. Although the film starts off well, with Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) embarking on a special research trip that ends in a bat cave: the terminally ill Morbius is trying to cure himself and his childhood friend Milo (Matt Smith) with bat bodily fluids.

But the film’s screenwriters then felt compelled to show, in a rather drippy, clichéd and overlong lead-up, how Morbius and Milo become friends and how Morbius vows to cure himself and Milo.

If you strip away the clichés (finally, the film and TV producers could get away from the Stephen King copy-paste story solution that the weaker, sick children are inevitably humiliated and beaten by the evil, sinister villains), the film and TV series producers could get away from the clichés, because it’s been extremely tedious, boring, forced and not even realistic in this day and age for the umpteenth time), it’s not so much that the lead-up is so bad or unnecessary. It’s just that it’s too long in proportion to the film’s overall running time: After Morbius finally becomes a vampire, approx. about an hour is left for the actual vampire story, which these days is the length of a single episode of a streaming channel’s multi-season series. There’s not much to tell in it, after all.

Illogical and weak story

Unfortunately, the rest of the film also fails for this reason: there are too many illogical or intertwined story threads. For example, it’s not really clear why Milo becomes the main villain or why he kills certain characters because Matt Smith‘s performance is already excellent (and the film’s greatest strength), but the clumsy, confused script fails to provide any really well-constructed explanation for his actions. But it’s equally unclear why Morbius, played by Leto, becomes a quasi-good guy. I get that he’s the main character, and this isn’t Interview with the Vampire, it’s a superhero action movie based on a Marvel comic, but at least some sort of alibi explanation could have been concocted.

The same sloppy approach to vampires in the everyday ‘world’ is also typical. While this isn’t Vampire the Masquerade, and vampires have never been seen before, the cops hunting Morbius are not the least bit surprised by the fantastic things the “living vampire” is capable of, even if it is a bit silly to get arrested once.

In the end, while being a vampire offers all sorts of opportunities to stir up various internal conflicts beyond the “ouch, killing people by sucking their blood is nasty” (e.g. immortality, loss of loved ones, never seeing daylight again, etc.), this remains Morbius’ only conflict throughout. Sure, you can have it that way, but the genre has evolved so much since the nineties through other films that I felt like I was watching, say, another mediocre Blade.

The visuals and the main characters were fine

It’s also a shame about this shoddy script because otherwise, in terms of visuals and the visual world in general, Morbius did not fail. The clashes are generally quite epic (especially between the two vampires), the effects are sound overall, and the mask masters did an excellent job with the vampires’ looks.

Actually, there was no problem with the actors’ performances either: although apart from one or two of his films (he was great in Devil in the Details, for example,) I’m not usually a fan of Jared Leto’s performance. Still, he perfectly brought the sickly doctor on crutches-turned-vampire-superhero character, and Matt Smith even outdid Leto. Adria Arjona, as Martine Bancroft, was less brilliant, but it’s also true that there was not much to be gained from her simple, lovelorn doctor. The other actors were totally forgettable – especially those who played the dumb policemen.

Tears instead of blood drops

There was enormous potential in this film, as the classic horror character of the vampire could have been an exciting mix of sinister horror films and superhero thrills. Plus, with its origin story, it would have been a great way to introduce the character of Morbius into the world of the MCU. The visual effects and action sequences were also done decently by the filmmakers. Although the other actors’ performances were very forgettable, the lead actor playing the two vampires was not to be complained about. Then, it was a shame that the script was so weak and often illogical that it was a mess. However, I do not feel that the film is as bad as most critics, so I hope that a sequel will perhaps make up for it or that we will see Morbius in a better movie.

-BadSector-