Morbius review: Marvel Studios’ vampire wants what Venom has

It’s true: movies are magic. It’s just that people often forget that sometimes, magic is bad. Morbius is the kind of magic you’d want to keep a lid on: a two-hour spell that makes viewers forget it actually stars Jared Leto, one of the few men alive in danger of being You can also interesting, thanks to his widely publicized overcommitment to Method acting and a public persona that frequently evokes “benevolent cult leader” vibes. Unfortunately, Morbius isn’t a good showcase for his talents the way its Sony/Marvel predecessor Venom Even though they share the same structure, it was Tom Hardy’s showcase movie. The movie is about the apes. VenomIt turns out that a very poor time is one without an unpredictable performance in the middle.

Similar Venom, Morbius The story of a Spider-Man villain is spun into one that makes him an anti-hero in his little corner of the universe. As one of the trailers reveals, the film takes place in the same universe. Venom.) Leto is Dr. Michael Morbius, an eminent scientist who has a debilitating, rare blood disorder that renders him unable to walk and requires regular blood transfusions. Dr. Morbius, we’re told, is one of the world’s foremost scientific minds, having developed a blue-tinged artificial blood that has “saved more lives than penicillin.” Yet he still has not found a cure for his disease — something he desperately wants, not for his own sake, but for his childhood friend Milo (Matt Smith), who suffers from the same disease and funds Morbius’ research through his wealth.

In a desperate attempt to test his first viable cure, Morbius uses himself as a guinea pig for a serum meant to rewrite his genome and make him into a hybrid human and vampire bat — an experiment that’s off the books and unethical. (If it wasn’t, someone probably would have asked him to say “human/bat chimera” out loud, and re-consider whether the experiment was a good idea.) With the help of colleague and love interest Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), Morbius “accidentally” turns himself into a Living Vampire — basically a regular vampire, but without the traditional church allergies.

Image: Sony Pictures

MorbiusThis is the type of movie that viewers would do well to not sweat the small stuff. Anyone wondering about the specifics of Morbius’ disease or superpowers is better off not trying to parse the film’s thin explanations. Although the film is set in New York City, it was clearly shot in London. The crew taped a few signs from subway stations to a Tube station wall. They called it day. The film only truly comes to life when Matt Smith’s Milo assumes his villainous role, learning what Morbius has become and taking the serum himself.

Milo, a newly vampiric, enjoys Morbius’s terror and casts aside the limitations that prevent him from eating real blood. (The two of them repeatedly refer to this as drinking “red” or “blue,” which never stops being funny.) This is the greatest problem. MorbiusAlthough he isn’t in the movie nearly as often as he should, the villain is still having the kind of fun Morbius deserves. Milo dances and preens every moment he’s on camera, in a performance that’s only marred by the CGI makeover both leads get when they vamp up, a choice that doesn’t seem much better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer-style prosthetics.

Smith’s dynamism painfully underlines the lack of imagination and energy elsewhere in the film. It is plainly shot with only a few scenes and a score that shamelessly glorifies Smith’s dynamism. Batman Begins, MorbiusIt appears to be a well-planned blockbuster movie, and is therefore very smooth. The action of the film is dull and repetitive, with long slow-mo pauses. Its violence is toned down and defanged, even though it’s about, y’know, vampires. In spite of direction from Daniel Espinosa, who previously made 2017’s surprisingly creepy The Best of Life, MorbiusThis film doesn’t portray any authentic atmosphere. If Instagram had a “blockbuster” filter, this film would use it the whole time.

Photo: Sony Pictures

The most important lesson of Venom’s success was that if unimaginative superhero franchise films Must be churned out, they can still feel worthwhile if they’re fueled by smart, funny performances. Although audiences are drawn to characters they enjoy, many also love characters performed by actors. PeopleThey are played by actors with peculiar quirks. Morbius is what happens when there’s a studio desire for another VenomBut, without too much thought about how. VenomIt can be connected to anyone. It’s only there to plug into a burgeoning crossover franchise. (As two nonsensical scenes in the middle of the credits indicate.

It’s also buck-wild that Morbius All this, while Jared Leto stars. He’s the guy who made the Joker comically twisted, his hilariously transformative performance is the best part of House of Gucci, he’s doing extremely committed accent work in WeCrashed. He should have the ability to make Morbius famous. Instead, he’s a victim, sucked dry by a big-budget movie that’s only interested in selling a sequel.

Morbius Opening in Theaters: March 31,