Movie Review: Morbius

By now, you've probably seen more than one review that slates one of the current Marvel offerings, Morbius. I certainly have and I suspect that going in with low expectations certainly helped with my experience of the film. Helped - but didn't solve all the problems.

Jared Leto stars as Dr Michael Morbius - a brilliant doctor who receives a Nobel prize for creating synthetic blood. However, he also has a rare and debilitating blood disorder and spends his spare research time trying to cure his own disease. This involves splicing some Costa Rican vampire bat DNA with human DNA. His experiments eventually bear fruit and, in international waters, he uses himself as the first human test subject.

By now, we all know that messing with animal/human hybrids never ends well, and, while Morbius appears to be cured (miraculously gaining weight and body condition in a few moments ...) it turns out that he's also channelling vampire and needs to keep the inner vampire at bay by drinking blood. Of course, it's initially a happy coincidence that he's got a stash of synthetic blood at his lab but it transpires that the blue synthetic blood only holds off the vampire for a diminishing interval. But Morbius is on top of this and apparently has the strength of character to stay on the good side of things.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case for Morbius's childhood friend, Milo, played by Matt Smith. Milo also suffers from the mystery blood disorder and, when he discovers Morbius has a cure, doesn't give two hoots about the ethical issues that arise from needing blood. Indeed, Milo embraces life as a vampire, seeking out red (real) blood and exsanguinating large chunks of the New York population while he's at it.

Thus we have a rather crudely drawn battle between good and evil, which results in a lot of swishing, swoshing and fancy footwork (and CGI). Morbius's love interest, Dr Martine Bancroft, falls victim to Milo in this power play, as does Dr Nicholas, who has treated Morbius and Milo since childhood. 

So - Morbius is the good guy. Milo's the bad guy. Milo dies. The end. There's a couple of very weird end-credit scenes that will only make sense if you're fully across the Marvel universe (and maybe not even then) and it's obvious the film is set up for a sequel (spoiler - Bancroft's not dead dead).

Is it any good? Well, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting but overall, I felt the film really didn't know which way it was heading most of the time. Fleetingly, we see the ethical tension in Morbius (being a good guy yet having vampiric tendencies can't be easy) but too often he is just tortured for no reason other than being tortured. There's a moment of lightness when we see Milo enjoying his new body, but his sudden switch to bad guy makes little sense (unless it all hinges on one childhood incident, which I'm not buying). There's some flashy fight scenes that don't make a lot of sense and the whole vampire thing doesn't hang together well. Is it something they can control at will? Is it real blood that makes them bad? Does a lack of blood turn them into violent vampires? Or does it return them to their feeble state? And ultimately - do you care?

I found the level of suspension of disbelief required by this film just too high. There was very little subtlety in the characters - the two cops and Dr Bancroft in particular were really just warm bodies on the screen. Matt Smith did a great job and Jared Leto was OK (and writing this, I wonder really if Leto might not have made a better Batman than Robert Pattinson) but ultimately, this film is a 'yeah but nah' from me.

I'll give it a pass - because if you're a die-hard Marvel fan you'll see it and, undoubtedly, love it.

2.5/5

(This film is rated M in Australia)