“Unfathomably incompetent.” That was my initial thought once the credits started to roll on Morbius. Lazy, bland, surface level at every turn. I think the “bland” note is what I keep coming back to the most. Nearly every decision made in Morbius was the most obvious, boring decision that could have been made. (Matt Smith might be the exception, but we’ll get to him). I’m all for lean movies. In a time when it seems like so many directors are scared or otherwise unwilling to cut a single frame, it’s a pleasant sight to see someone go for a more streamlined approach. Except that Morbius goes too far. Though it’s unclear if lots of footage was cut, or if it simply wasn’t there to begin with. Whatever the the cause, the effect feels like an incomplete story.
Let’s start with that story, because there barely is one. Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) suffers from a rare blood disease that we never get any information about. We pretty much only know two things. Eventually, it will take his life. And his childhood best friend Milo (Matt Smith) also suffers from the same disease. So he dedicates his life to finding a cure. And that search ultimately leads him to try splicing human and bat DNA, hoping this will work because of science reasons (again, little to no explanation).
He finally finds a combination that he thinks will work, so he heads to the only place in the world where there are no laws to run the transfusion on himself: international waters. He takes his lab partner, Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), and a crew of mercenaries. The cure works, but Morbius discovers it’s much more of a curse. He transforms into a superhuman vampire, and he murders everyone on board except for Bancroft, feeding off their blood in the process. He flees the boat, as he now must try to find a cure for his cure.
Michael quickly learns that he must feed on blood to stave off the return of his disease. The synthetic blood he won a Nobel Prize for creating works, but is much less potent. The synthetic initially works for six hours, but that time just drops and drops. Human blood is what he needs, but he won’t let himself be turned into a murderous monster.
Meanwhile, he tells Milo about what happened, and Milo insists on receiving the cure too, but Michael rejects him. Milo is furious, and ultimately takes the serum unbeknownst to Michael. Unlike Michael, Milo embraces this new version of himself, and now Michael has to stop his friend on top of fixing what he’s done to himself.
And that’s it, that’s the story. Now, in and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with a simple story. But this one is almost too simple. There’s no depth anywhere, minimal explanation on almost every plot point. For example, when Martine discovers the work Michael has been doing, she’s appalled. But then she sees one successful test run on a lab mouse, and she’s all of a sudden fully on board. We don’t get any of her reasoning, not even a single line. Next time we see her, she’s there on the boat with Michael.
When a movie’s plot is so simple, the character work becomes that much more important. But it’s not only Martine that Morbius bungles. Milo is a wealthy douchebag whose only character trait is being a wealthy douchebag. Morbius doesn’t even tell us how he became so rich! He just is. On the other hand, though, Matt Smith’s performance here is probably the one thing that kept this from being a complete failure. He brings a much-needed jolt of energy. Unfortunately, those benefits are limited, as it ends up feeling like Smith is in a completely different movie from everyone else.
Leto’s Morbius himself is a lowlight too. It’s a performance completely devoid of any energy, seemingly devoid of effort as well. Leto just kind of floats through from scene to scene, getting his lines in and moving on. An uncharacteristically muted job from someone who typically revels in committed, often over-the-top performances.
So the story doesn’t work, and the characters don’t work, what about the action? The effects? That’s big no and no, I’m afraid. The action scenes are dark and messy. The vampire effects look like they came from a Spirit Halloween.
Even the two credits scenes miss the mark in every sense of the word. I won’t get into the specifics, but I can’t leave them out completely. They are terrible, to an almost impressive degree. Like, they’re really, really bad. It’s just a rotten cherry on top of a blood flavored sundae (that’s a bad flavor, just to be clear).
I don’t know what Sony thinks they’re doing with this small section of Marvel they still control, but when what we have so far are the two Venom movies (fun enough, I suppose, but wildly flawed) and Morbius, then I don’t think I want to see what comes next.
Score: 33/100
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