Movie Review: Morbius

I had very little hope going in to watch Sony's next Marvel project; Morbius. Based on the iconic Spider-Man comic character, Morbius is as attempt to introduce the living vampire into Sony's very own Marvel universe in a similar light to how they introduced Venom a few years back. I have my own issues with how Sony mishandled Venom as a character which didn't help my expectations when it came to Morbius either. Morbius while not nearly as nauseating as Venom or it's sequel was, doesn't have anything substantial to offer through it's 104 minute runtime.

The narrative of Morbius follows the origins of how Doctor Michael Morbius, in an attempt to cure his rare blood disease ends up transforming himself into a vampire. That is fundamentally what the plot is here, I'm not going to elaborate all that more on it because that is literally what the film is, there's very little else the film offers in terms of a narrative. The personal conflict in the film stems from the relationship Morbius has with his life long friend Milo, who suffers from a similar blood disease and as Morbius tries to suppress his curse, he finds himself challenged to let it free by Milo. Despite having a commendable cast of actors filling out the roles in this film, I just couldn't care any less about the plotline of this film. It's written in a way that feels so boring and flat and I just feel like if the film doesn't care enough to try keep me invested in a compelling narrative, then why should I care? The fact is I don't and that underwhelming feeling isn't just tied to the narrative.

Visually this film just doesn't offer anything that captivating either. There's no distinct style or tone that the film can call it's own. Hell even the movies opening and closing credits sequences feels notably out of place and really basic. When you have a narrative element that doesn't care to keep you invested, it just annoys me to see how drab the action and visuals of the film are. There are for the most part three action sequences in this film and they all just feel uninspired and die out as soon as they start. 

Morbius isn't a god-awful film, but it isn't a good one either. It accomplishes very little and only succeeds in being notably boring and underwhelming by the end of it all. I can forgive a bad film trying to be good, but in Morbius' case you just feel the film doesn't care about your attention and when the film doesn't care, how can it expect the audience to care either? It's fitting that Morbius is a vampire, because he's effectively drained all the fun out of his film.