Film Review: Dr. Morbius Has A Thirst

Morbius is the latest cinematic offering from Marvel Entertainment about the living vampire. Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are the screenwriters with Daniel Espinosa sitting in the director’s chair. Jared Leto plays the lead role of Dr. Michael Morbius. Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, and Tyrese Gibson are included in the cast as well.

This is a bit of a familiar story. A genius doctor with a debilitating illness experiments with vampire bats to find a cure for himself and his surrogate brother. He actually succeeds in finding a cure, but develops some dangerous abilities in the process. He kills some mercenaries on a ship and makes his escape. He becomes the first living vampire, however he is not alone for long. When the brother learns of the cure, he ignores the virulent side effects and enjoys his newfound mobility a bit too much. Morbius has to stay ahead of the authorities and stop his longtime friend from slaughtering innocent people in order to quench his thirst for blood.

I am not sure where this thing goes a bit off the rails. Most of the cast I usually respect as actors, however there was not much that worked here. The visual effects and some of the fight scenes were engaging enough. There were times that I was not sure what abilities I was actually seeing from Morbius though. The characters seemed a little flat and predictable. Most of the problems seems to stem from the writing and editing. Gibson and Madrigal play these two FBI agents trying to track down Morbius, however I was not sure they were actually needed. I had some trouble buying Matt Smith as this formidable villain. Of course, I know him from his time on Doctor Who.. Smith is a talented guy, but I am not sure he was served all that well by this script. There just ended up being almost nothing memorable here.

I have seen worse films of course, but this one felt sort of bland in spite of the impressive visual effects. I was not expecting that much greatness, however the disappointment was a bit more pronounced than I anticipated.