This week at the Morris theater, the newest Sony Marvel film Morbius opened and The Lost City was held over for a second week. My thoughts below.
I was not excited to see Morbius, but I was morbidly interested, pun intended, to see just how disastrous this film was. The film was directed by Daniel Espinosa and follows Dr. Michael Morbius, played by Jared Leto, who has a debilitating disease which causes his body not to be able to produce new blood. In trying to cure his disease, he inadvertently turns himself into a vampire. I wish I could say the process is more interesting or engaging than that, but it really isn’t. He sort of just does it, and it is explained in the vaguest terms possible and it barely makes sense. He has a childhood friend, played by Matt Smith, who also has the disease and turns himself into a vampire. Instead of trying to harness his newfound power as Morbius does, Smith’s character resorts to killing indiscriminately. There was other stuff going on, the police are chasing Morbius and he has a generic love interest, but these are such vague plot-points that lack any semblance of development they are literally not worth mentioning. The plot is painfully uninspired and genuinely feels like a side-plot to a different film.
Morbius takes every stereotype that was familiar to the superhero genre ten years ago and injects it into the plot in some capacity. The hero and villain in the story have the same powers like in the first Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, and it steals the sick best friend who needs a cure from The Amazing Spider-Man 2. All of the scenes which try and capture a horror movie vibe are very generic and have been done much better in a multitude of other movies. The hall scene especially stands out as painfully standard. Needless to say, I barely remember any specific moments from the film, and the ones I do remember are not for the right reasons.
The weak plot might have been forgivable if there was some positive element to balance it out, but there isn’t a positive aspect to this film at all. The acting was laughably bad across the board, and Jared Leto had no charisma whatsoever. There were attempts to bring a certain level of humor to his characterization, but they genuinely felt off-putting. Jared Leto is just a very creepy dude and it is difficult to not be uncomfortable with him. This can work in films where the director understands this, because Jared Leto in Blade Runner: 2049 is genuinely excellent, but this film clearly does not. Matt Smith was enjoyably over the top as the villain and was the only reason that this film was any fun. No other actor is even in the film enough to make any sort of impact, so performances from Tyrese Gibson and Jared Harris are not even worth mentioning. They could have been removed from the film and it would have remained fundamentally the same.
The action scenes are also incomprehensibly awful. It was genuinely impossible to tell what was going on in almost all of the action scenes, except for when they randomly resort to slo-motion every so often. I have heard that this film was originally going to be rated R, so the action may have been better before it was edited to be PG-13, but I am not so sure. Even if the action scenes were rated R, I think they would be just as bad: You might be able to tell what was going on but I bet it would be just as lame and the slo-mo is cringy and unnecessary either way. The final fight scene is especially horrendous; it’s visually overstimulating, and the staging of it makes literally no sense.
The only positive experience I had with this film was laughing with the crowd at the terrible dialogue and awful scenes, but this made the entire experience worth it. The level of stupidity that this film reaches is genuinely hilarious and the crowd reaction was fantastic! Everyone recognized just how bad this film was and the communal acknowledgement made for a lot of great, humorous moments. There were scenes that were intended to be sexy; for instance, as Morbius’ love interest dies , bites his lip so hard that he bleeds into her mouth, which turns her into a vampire herself. This part was by far the funniest moment in the film and got a huge laugh out of the audience, me included.
Despite the ironic enjoyment I got out of the film, this was ultimately an atrocious movie that was deeply and fundamentally flawed. The structure is nonexistent. The acting is awful. And the action is boring at best. The only positives were unintentional. Morbius wallows in its passable yet unintelligibly trashy vibe and I will give it a 2/10.
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