Morbius Movie Review: I saw a great movie about a man turning into a bat this year. A creature of night who descends from the sky to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies, and unsurprisingly, that movie wasn’t Morbius. When Sony started out with their so called Spider-Man universe, with Venom and its sequel, it at least made sense. With Morbius, it doesn’t make any sense at all. Morbius Review: Jared Leto’s Living Vampire Fails To Impress Critics, the Marvel Film Tagged As ‘Worst Sequel-Bait’.

Morbius follows Dr Michael Morbius (Jared Leto). A man born with a rare blood disease, who tries to cure himself with an experimental treatment involving bats. The treatment goes wrong and you guessed it, he turns into a blood thirsty vampire.

Jared Leto plays his second comic book role here after the Joker. His Joker was universally hated in the beginning, so this is sort of a redemption for him, to do another comic character justice, but nope. He is blander than three day old bread here. There is nothing redeeming about his performance. Whenever he was on screen, it just felt like watching a wooden stick.

Matt Smith plays the role of Lucien, where characters in the beginning couldn’t decide if his name is pronounced as loo-s-ien or loo-shi-en. Smith is clearly having fun in the role, but then even after a point, it hit a level of camp where I couldn’t take it. There is a scene of him dancing to a rap song in a very corny way, and even then I was wondering if the filmmakers actually thought this looked good or what. Whenever he did seem interesting, it was covered up in layers of CGI as he transformed into a vampire.

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Lucien, or as he calls himself Milo at certain times, wasn’t interesting as a character either. His motivations to become a villain made no sense at all, and it just made the movie seem so laughable. There are certain shots of him where he just looked straight up corny, and not in a good, enjoyable way, but rather just weird. You know the character is a problem when the actor behind him comes out and says that he doesn’t understand him.

Jared Harris is monumentally wasted as Morbius' mentor. You have such a high level actor here, and you don’t give him anything to do. Adria Arjona does her best to make the film a bit more interesting with Martine Bancroft, but gets less scope to do so.

The plot is a mess of proportions that I can’t explain. The movie itself is so confused about its own story. It doesn’t make sense in the slightest. It’s a very straightforward plot with themes as deep as a puddle. There is nothing special here. You have seen this story be done a thousand times before. There is no flair, no risks, nothing. Just straight up formulaic mish mash of things.

Director Daniel Espinosa really doesn’t do anything special here and it shows. He directs Morbius in such a kinetic way where nothing in here has room to breathe. The cuts are janky, the scenes feel pointless, to say the action is lackluster would be an understatement. Morbius Movie: Review, Cast, Plot, Trailer, Release Date – All You Need to Know About Jared Leto's Spider-Man Spinoff!

The cinematography as well feels so uninspired. There is no shot composition here. Scenes are awkwardly framed and played out, and it just didn’t have that spectacle you would expect from superhero films. The only time the visuals even felt alright is when Morbius was using echolocation, or displaying his powers.

There are also two post-credit scenes at the end that will just make your eyes roll to the back of your head. It sets up a sequel that in hindsight, doesn’t make any sense at all given the characters involved there. It gave me second hand embarrassment as a comic book fan.

Yay!

Morbius’ Powers

Nay!

Jared Leto

Uninspired Story

Final Thoughts

Morbius is the cinematic equivalent of watching your older brother play video games and asking if you can join in. Rather than allowing you to play, he simply pretends to connect the controller to the console, leaving you standing there looking like an idiot, believing you are playing. Makes sense why the MCU did its best to make sure that the Sony Spider-Man universe is very loosely connected to them. Morbius is playing in theatres right now.

Rating:1.0

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 01, 2022 10:05 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).