Morbius – Film Review

Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder, and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) attempts a desperate gamble. While at first it seems to be a radical success, a darkness inside him is unleashed. Will good override evil – or will Morbius succumb to his mysterious new urges?

The Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) is one of the strangest cinematic universes to ever exist. Heck, I would go as far as to say that it is the strangest to ever exist. I know some of you might be saying that the Dark Universe is, but I was actually super excited for that to take off, only for it to be completely scrapped after 2017’s The Mummy.

I always try my best to not let trailers weigh me down, but after seeing all of the trailers for Daniel Espinosa‘s Morbius, I just couldn’t help but groan and roll my eyes every single time. I was praying that the film would be a legitimate surprise and an actual treat, but it’s the furthest thing from that.

I know that both Venom and its sequel Let There Be Carnage were financially successful, but the overwhelming majority of people who watched those films kind of hated them. But, the cinematic universe continued for one simple reason – money. Because of course it did.

Morbius is one of the most ugly, boring, and legitimately lazy comic book movies I have ever seen, and also one of the worst in general. Despite the fact that this movie only runs at one-hour and forty-four minutes, it felt significantly longer than that. Multiple times throughout the film, I felt myself slowly drifting off before shaking back into reality, praying that I didn’t have too much longer to go until the end credits rolled.

Easily the biggest problem with this film is the script from Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. It is extremely barebones and black-and-white for starters, not to mention how many cringe-worthy lines of dialogue are present. The entire movie is basically just about Michael Morbius being sick. Oh no.

He then takes a huge medical risk which turns him into a living vampire – this cures him, but it makes him feel terribly dark inside. Now, he has to determine whether or not he wants to continue going down a path of darkness and evil, or if he wants to save the world.

So, yeah, you probably already know what will ultimately happen by the end of the movie just based off what I wrote there. There are so many ridiculously predictable moments in Morbius to the point where you legitimately have to wonder how much the creative team really thought things out, because I am certain that even pre-teens will figure everything out extremely early on.

There are also dozens upon dozens of questions this movie raises but couldn’t care less to actually answer by the time it all ends. It also features one of the worst post-credit scenes in Marvel movie history. It’s actually incredibly embarrassing to see the path they’re going down here.

But Morbius does have some bright spots. Jared Leto is fun and entertaining to watch in the titular role, even if he does ham things up a bit. His co-star Matt Smith also has a ton of fun in the role of Milo, an interesting character whose story has been kept a bit of a mystery in the trailers and for good reason.

Some of the action sequences can be a little entertaining and the musical score from Jon Ekstrand is also quite nice to listen to. But aside from that, Morbius is an outlandishly boring and lazily written film that raises dozens of questions without giving any answers.