Producers: Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach and Lucas Foster Director: Daniel Espinosa Screenplay: Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless Cast: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson, Corey Johnson, Charlie Shotwell and Joseph Esson Distributor: Sony Entertainment/Columbia Pictures
Grade: D-
Continuing its ransacking of the Spider-Man portion of the Marvel comics catalogue to fashion a MCU-style conveyer belt of superhero features, Sony follows up its dreadful “Venom” series with an origin story for another villain turned antihero, the “Living Vampire” Morbius, an obscure character introduced in print in the seventies that has appeared sporadically since. He’s a fellow tortured by a self-inflicted curse, but his anguish is nothing compared to the pain this terrible movie inflicts on the audience.
Scripters Matt Sazama and Buck Sharpless, whose previous gems include “Dracula Untold,” “The Last Witch Hunter” and “Gods of Egypt,” offer a narrative that one might describe as so stripped down to the bare inessentials that its basics would barely fill a post-it note.
Dr, Michael Morbius (Jared Leto, surprisingly unimpressive) is a brilliant scientist, inventor of artificial blood no less, afflicted from birth with a rare disease that has a crippling effect. Trying to find a cure with his research colleague and fiancée Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), he concocts a serum mixing his DNA with that of a vampire bat and then, in the usual foolish fashion, injects himself with it. Not a good idea. It turns him periodically into a gruesome monster with an insatiable need for blood, though one endowed with super strength and remarkable super-speeded agility.
Michael is appalled by the carnage he wreaks, but his friend Milo (Matt Smith, Prince Philip from “The Crown,” slumming here and chewing the scenery), a wealthy invalid suffering from the same disabling condition, takes a different view when he hears about what’s happened. He and Michael had met decades earlier as children (Michael played by Charlie Shotwell and Milo by Joseph Esson) in a clinic run by Dr. Nicholas (Jared Harris). Milo doesn’t mind the side effects—sees them instead as invigorating—and takes the serum despite Michael’s warnings, with lip-smacking results.
That sets up a quasi-sibling rivalry (at one point Milo actually talks about Nicholas having liked Michael better) interrupted by inquiries from a couple of singularly inept FBI investigators (stone-faced Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal, trying without success to serve as a bit of comic relief in a picture totally lacking the crude humor of the “Venom” movies, or any other kind). It all ends in a frantic confrontation between the two “living vampires,” in which Morbius exhibits the power to summon thousands of bats to do his bidding, something even Batman can’t do, despite his name.
The one positive thing that can be said of “Morbius” is that it doesn’t unduly drag out the simplistic story, coming in at well under two hours as edited by Pietro Scalia, even with very long closing credit crawls. (To be fair, they’re extended by a couple of those obligatory teasers, featuring Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes/Vulture character from “Spider-Man: Homecoming” as a potential figure in a sequel that threatens to be even worse).
But its 144 minutes are quite tedious enough, especially since the effects are splashy but messy, the result of director Daniel Espinosa, cinematographer Oliver Wood and their team trying to do something different—streaks of smoke and light streaming from the vampires as they swoop about—that doesn’t come off. On the other hand, Stefania Celia’s dank production design fits the movie’s gloomy mood, and Jon Ekstrand’s undistinguished score hits the beats expected in this sort of picture.
With due apologies to one of the few excellent modern vampire films, “Morbius” might have better been called “Let the Wrong One In,” were that title not already taken by a current horror comedy; surely there are subsidiary characters in the Spider-Verse more interesting than this. But like all the Marvel-affiliated movies, even the dreadful “Venom” ones, it will probably be a big hit, a sad commentary on the choices made by viewers nowadays and the start of yet another lamentable franchise.