Superheroes are getting moodier. The idea of ‘dark’ comic-book adaptations isn’t exactly new, but lately they’ve stepped up a gear, with Matt Reeves’ extraordinarily emo The Batman, and Marvel’s venture into the murky morals of Moon Knight. Sony’s latest MCU-adjacent Spidey-villain spin-off attempts to jump on this tone-shifting bandwagon, focusing on their most bloodthirsty of anti-heroes: a living vampire.
Unlike the hapless Eddie Brock, the other anti-hero of a franchise once unfortunately named the Sony Pictures Universe Of Marvel Characters (or ‘SPUMC’), Dr Michael Morbius is actively looking for his superpower. A medical savant, Nobel Prize rejector, artificial blood creator and terminal blood-disorder patient, he uses the super-important anticoagulants in the blood of vampire bats (don’t think too deeply about the science stuff; Morbius’ script certainly doesn’t) to develop a cure, which transforms his emaciated, fragile body into a powerful, muscular one. Just one problem — he now needs human blood to survive.
Morbius’ core concept is strong – unfortunately, it’s not properly supported by any other element of the film.
It’s saying something when your most grounded performance in years is as a superhuman vampire, but that is strangely true of Jared Leto, here finding a quiet sincerity that’s far less showy than the distracting accents (House Of Gucci) and messianic tendencies (WeCrashed) of more recent roles. The main trio of him, Matt Smith (Morbius’ pal Milo) and Adria Arjona (playing fellow doctor Martine Bancroft) are woefully under-developed; outside of their relationship to Morbius, Milo and Martine’s character-development is non-existent. He is forced into the mould of cartoonish villain (the kind of which Smith can do in his sleep, but still proves unsatisfying); she ends up nothing more than a disposable love-interest.
Visually, Morbius does some interesting things with its titular hero’s powers. His superspeed is signified by a trailing haze around him, which doesn’t entirely work, but the use of slow-mo to pick moments out of the hectic set-pieces is effective — an extended fight and flight through a subway station being a particular standout. Seeing his echo-location powers ricochet off walls, ripple across New York City and pump through the air as he tracks a heartbeat is also cool. It’s just a shame we didn’t see him get to grips with it all — instead, his abilities are explained through an exposition dump, and seemingly mastered instantly. All of this falters in a nosedive of a final act, during which any sense of climactic action is masked completely by incessant swarms of bats, poorly rendered breaking glass and blurry, crumbling buildings.
Morbius’ core concept is strong — two friends close enough to be brothers, bonded by their shared suffering, who’ll do anything to spend one day feeling truly alive rather than at death’s door. Unfortunately, it’s not properly supported by any other element of the film, with messy action, wafer-thin characters and an even slighter plot letting down what could have been a lean, dark, interesting instalment in the SPUMC. And don’t even get us started on those unforgivable post-credit stings.
