Sigh. Yup… Morbius is as bad as the salivating press said it was going to be… as bad as the Letterboxd scores, as bad as Rotten Tomatoes says. It’s sad because I was hoping this wouldn’t just be an Easy Target movie… you know, the low-hanging fruit that causes critics to sharpen their knives. That I’d come out of it saying, “You know, it’s not that bad” or “Well, it’s bad but it’s kind of fun bad.” No. This is not fun bad. This is just booooooring. Tedious. Mediocre. Dull.
Morbius stars Jared Leto as a doctor who injects a serum made from vampire bats to help cure his rare genetic disorder. And, yup, probably shouldn’t have done that, what with the vampire bats ‘n all. Soon he’s hungering for human blood… which he has to reject because he’s some kind of Marvel superhero and this film is PG-13.
The main problem with this movie is that it’s just so very dull. Somehow Jared Leto decides to downplay his part so we have an exceedingly boring and generic anti-hero… or hero… or I dunno… he’s a vampire that doesn’t eat people. He has to fight another vampire who does eat people.
The writing isn’t witty or thoughtful or creative or original or funny… The movie is dark and grim and thinks it’s emo but it’s not even that interesting… and that’s a low bar to cross. It has a lot of special effects but mostly they are bats and they are dark and dull. Some nice work on human faces transforming into bat faces at times… not sure that’s worth the price of admission.
Not to sound too much like a Marvel fanboy, but Sony should just stop now please. While I liked the Venom movies, this just reminds me of them flailing around trying to make Spider-Man work… until they gave up and sided with Marvel who made them ALL the money. So now they are back to thinking THEY have the talent and can slam the few plastic toys they have under their film rights contract and, once again, try to get their shared universe working.
Don’t bother… talking to you and to Sony here. This is just a misbegotten snooze-fest with uninteresting characters doing uninteresting, unoriginal things. As a vampire movie, you’ve kind of seen it all before. As a superhero movie, it makes for a mundane vampire movie. As a bit of borrowed Marvel glory, it should stop trying and save us all the price of admission.
Score: 57