Morbius (2022) Review

While DC bang out another boring Batman reboot Marvel are concerned with a man bat of an altogether different type as Sony’s Spider-Man Universe expands further into horror introducing audiences to Morbius, better known in comic circles as the Living Vampire.

As featured in our now woefully out of date Marvel Characters straight out of a Horror Movie series, Doctor Michael Morbius first showed up in 1971 in Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 number 101 and throughout his fictional life has been a hero, a villain and an anti-hero, fighting with as well as alongside the web slinger at multiple points.

Intriguingly the conversion of this brooding blood sucker to the silver screen could have happened decades ago as writer David S. Goyer stated he originally intended Morbius to be the primary villain should there be a sequel to his 1998 movie Blade, a film that along with its sequels not only reintroduced Marvel characters to the masses but proved that horror and comics are a wonderful mix.

Flash forward to 2015 and having failed to make as much cash or critical acclaim from owning the rights to Spider-Man as originally intended, Sony Pictures shrewdly decided to collaborate with Marvel Studios on all future movies related to the wall crawler and his fount of furious foes of which there are a fair few.

The results so far have been mixed. On one side, representing the peak, is 2021’s mind blowing and magnificent Spider-Man: No Way Home which embraced Sony’s past mistakes brilliantly, binding together all their Spider-Man movies, from Sam Raimi’s Noughties trilogy to the 2010’s unpopular reboots, into an unexpected and initially unintended Octology.

Hugely successful No Way Home offered up a shockingly original and satisfying way for even DC to rectify their scatter shot attempts at a shared universe which has only involved multiple versions of the same big name characters with different actors and minuscule alterations served up ad infinitum until everyone is sick of them.

Sadly it’s not all good and 2018’s vapid Venom completely misjudged and misinterpreted the character from the comics. Transforming a dark and menacing alien monster into a silly slapstick buddy movie it showed that Sony didn’t exactly understand all the properties they had purchased.

Although 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage undid some of the damage due to a pitch perfect performance from Woody Harrelson, the true dark side of Marvel I had witnessed in so many creepy, creative and chaotic comics from Man-Thing to Monsters Unleashed, Marvel Zombies to Punisher: Franken-Castle and more, was yet to be uncovered.

Surely in Morbius, I hoped, the time for a superb super hero horror hybrid was upon us?

Unfortunately I was wrong and although there are glimpses of greatness within director Daniel Espinosa film it seems unwilling to push itself far enough, ending up retreading far too familiar ground instead of innovating and experimenting.

All the more disappointingly the set up is strong with a trip to Morbius’s past showing his unhappy and unfortunate sickly childhood spent stuck in a private hospital in Greece run by caring doctor come father figure Emil Nikols (The Crown and Chernobyl’s Jared Harris).

Growing up to be an expert in the rare blood disease that bonds him and his childhood friend Milo (played by Dr Who himself Matt Smith) Doctor Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has won awards and professional kudos even inventing a form of artificial blood that has saved many lives.

Although strong in his will and mind Morbius is still frail and fatally ill and as both his and Milo’s clocks tick towards an untimely end his need to cure the disease that has plagued them becomes an obsession.

Convinced the key lies in vampire bat DNA and their ability to process the blood they feed on he starts up unconventional and unethical experiments leading to a break through which takes him on an altogether different path.

Testing his serum on himself he is transformed but at a terrible cost. Although stronger, faster and more agile than ever before with echolocation and an affinity with the flying mammals his abilities are spawned from, he also finds out he is addicted to blood with his powers waning the longer he goes without feeding.

As a living vampire, he quickly realises his artificial substitute only works so well and soon his thirst becomes overpowering. Forced to face the curse that his cure has become Michael the man must fight Morbius the monster while dealing with the dreadful consequences of his actions on everyone around him.

Having directed the solid 2017 Sci-Horror Life (which was at one point rumoured to be a Venom origin story) Espinosa has proven his abilities to excite and shock an audience and moments of flair do feature in his film especially in regards to the fight scenes where Morbuis’s smoke-like slo-mo movements across the screen lean into vampire lore while looking slick and stylised.

Overall the effects are excellent especially in the transformation scenes that take Leto from a stick thin doctor on death’s door to beefcake hunk and vampiric beast, sometimes across the space of the same scene. Performance wise too everyone is on fine form especially Leto and Smith who relishes his role.

Unfortunately though none of this is enough and the movie which opens with so much potential quickly falls into stale story lines with cliched side characters and uninspired action. The idea of a science based vampire especially one whose alter ego stricken with ill health, is is a brilliant one that is never properly explored. Likewise the gore and violence is no where near extreme enough for a character so firmly rooted in horror, leaving the scenes where tension and terror is meant to be felt falling flat.

Also considering Morbius is so associated with being an anti-hero the film is sadly way too safe and risks that could have been taken in style, content and character are all abandoned for a far too formulaic super hero story which is a real shame.

A missed opportunity to make something more, although Sony and Marvel score points for bringing a rather random and obscure comic to the cinema, Morbius is one for fan boys and girls only lacking any real bite to truly excite.

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