Morbius (2022) Review

RATING: 2/10

DECADES are often defined by its pop culture, with these past 10 years easily being defined by this generation's obsession with superheroes. Comic books, of course, played a major role in their impact on society, but film and television adaptions nowadays are arguably having a larger impact than comics did. Big screen adaptions can be successful, but the larger quantity of films being released leaves more room open for critical failures, with Morbius being the next poster child for such missteps.

Biochemist Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has been struggling with an unspecified, rare blood disease from a young age. After uncovering a possible cure for the disease related to the blood types of bats, Morbius inadvertently infects himself with an unknown plasm, transforming the award-winning chemist into a creature infused with a form of vampirism.

If it sounds like I've missed anything from the plot description, trust me -- I haven't. Morbius is lifeless, attempting to ride the coattails of the Marvel franchise by teasing a lacklustre post-credits scene which raises more questions that will most likely never be answered. On top of not needing to exist at all, the film proves to be much, much worst than it had any right to be by failing to deliver in any way imaginable.

Morbius possesses many similarities to that of Venom as both films centre around a future villain in the Marvel cinematic universe, but one of the major problems with both movies is their premises in that they attempt to make the protagonist a good person, despite their methods of achieving their goals being anything but humane. Venom managed to avoid some of the problems by being naturally funny (in parts), but Morbius' attempt at comedy drags the film to a grinding halt, which I didn't think was possible due to the movie's already monotonous pace. A perfect example of this imperfect comedy is during an interaction with two important police officer characters early on where, after discovering multiple corpses caused by our "moral compass" Morbius, the two exclaim, "all of them for their clothes from the same generic mercenary store." This conversation isn't played off for laughs and makes innocent officers come off as villains as at this point, both have no idea that these victims are bad guys. This creates a disconnect that throws the rest of the movie into a larger mess as from this point forward, the lines between hero and villain are mixed to the point where the audience has no idea who to root for, which is a major problem if you're trying to make people root for an anti-hero.

Jared Leto somehow delivers the best performance in the film by being ironically-hilarious in scenes which are meant to be emotional and important. The rest of the cast, including Matt Smith, Jared Harris and Adria Arjona, aren't all inherently bad, but deliver such bland and uninteresting performances that it's hard to call them anything but awful, which is a real shame as these actors and actresses have been in great projects, particularly Harris, but you can't do much when you're given such a stale, repetitious script. For example, Arjona's character of Martine plays Morbius' love interest in the film, however, their chemistry comes off more as friendly banter between co-workers rather than an actual relationship, making their entire arc feel incomplete and underdeveloped by the time they express more feelings for each other; an incredible waste of what could have been an interesting moral dilemma for our anti-hero, having to choose between his love or a life of killing.

Prior to seeing Morbius, there was alot of criticisms which stated that this was one of the worst superhero films ever made, and after seeing it for myself, I can say that it was all warranted. Terrible acting, mind-numbing action, confusing editing and a story so predictable that I called 10 minutes into the film all come together to create the worst movie I've seen in 2022. This film exists only to introduce Morbius as a future Spider-Man villain, but ironically, the failure of his meaningless solo movie may just kill off any imminent plans for this now laughable character in the MCU. Please - don't watch Morbius.