Starring Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, and Tyrese Gibson

Directed by Daniel Espinosa

Sony, out now

Michael Morbius needs to find a cure…

Morbius is an offense to bats everywhere, especially vampire bats. Morbius is a mockery of the medical profession and a crime against science. Moreover, Morbius is the shallowest friend in your circle; even while they’re with you they’re only thinking of themselves.

In short this film is catastrophically bad. Not even so bad it’s good. There’s almost nothing to laugh at here, just a series of poor decisions, lack of character and world building with a narrative structure that makes no sense at all.

I’m not even going to talk about the shonky CGI.

When you’re including post credit scenes in the trailer to build buzz? Well…

Where to really begin? Let’s start with what’s good and that’s precisely two things.

Matt Smith as Lucian is clearly having a great deal of fun with his scenery chewing nonsense. In some ways this is a huge shame because Matt is completely wasted here. The expression on his face is almost perpetually one of having accepted he’s signed on to a complete stinker but is getting paid well and earning decent exposure. His role is absolutely off the charts daft. He leans into it and if there’s any joy in this film then most of it is found here when he’s on the screen alone.

The other sliver of fun is in the second of the two FBI agents played by Al Madrigal who has literally all the best lines in the movie.

I’ve been as kind as I can be. Now to talk about what doesn’t work.

It’s clear this was a much longer movie at some point. I would guess at least forty minutes to an hour. There are entire sequences that appear to be referring to character development that’s not in the finished product. There are claims about being friends that get no substantiation, no establishing scenes and no element of foreshadowing. There are decisions made entirely off screen that you only learn about because the characters then do something that no one could have known was in their nature. Yes, I’m looking at you, Lucian and the critical actions you’re given that WE NEVER EVEN SEE.

What’s astonishing is that without another hour of runtime I’m not sure how this film ever intended to introduce an origin story for Morbius, introduce his best friend (and actually show them being friends rather than repeatedly telling us) or take us through what’s a pretty poorly shown murder mystery.

What we get instead is an attempt to present horror on screen that doesn’t work because our main character is the murderer. It’s like watching the movie Alien from the Alien’s point of view and discovering that the Alien was a privileged White man who always got his way and his best friend, another privileged White man, who also always got his way.

Michael Morbius is so underwritten we don’t even know what disease he actually has. We don’t see any scenes establishing his character nor why he’s actually friends with the only other person he knows from childhood but who, the movie makes clear, he was separated from after a single afternoon together. Yes, that’s right, their ‘epic best friends to enemies’ journey is based on a relationship that lasted less time than my Sunday lunch.

As for his best friend? We know absolutely nothing about Matt Smith’s character. We don’t know where their money comes from, why they have an intermittent bodyguard, what their job is or even if, because it’s hinted at, they might be royalty. Nothing at all.

They may as well be two strangers squabbling over the last toilet roll in the supermarket at the beginning of the Covid lockdown. In some ways the despair I felt would then at least have felt justified.

Then there’s Morbius’ love interest. Apparently a world class doctor who clearly hasn’t ever worked on call, hasn’t studied ethics or made a funding application she’s then written as falling in love with a man who’s methodically killing everyone she knows.

Worse still – her entire arc, if you can laughably call it that, is to stand around and be talked about and then used by men. It is as offensive as it is rubbish. I wish there was more to say but the cynical, lazy pointless way in which she’s used is so male gaze Hollywood I can’t even.

Perhaps it’s only worth saying this – if she wasn’t in the film the average portrayal in movies of women as human beings with agency and their own thoughts not related to how men can save them would go up slightly.

As for the portrayal of science, medicine and bats…good grief. So, you get bat DNA and suddenly you crave human blood? WHY? Please tell me why? When was the last time anyone heard of bats singling humans out for their blood? Even in the opening scene it’s cattle carcasses we see not human. This is so bad the entire screening I was at laughed.

Then there’s the nonsense about vampire bats somehow being apex predators that are basically the piranhas of the skies. I can see some suit at the studio even being proud of this nonsense. Someone should make them watch Bridgerton on repeat until their eyes bleed as punishment (and possibly redemption).

I mean, I don’t ever expect good science in superhero movies – it comes with the territory (I’m looking at you Bruce ‘I have 7 PhDs’ Banner), but this was new levels of rubbish. So rubbish I don’t know whether to talk about the lack of scientific rigour, the unhygienic environments and practices, the 1950s pulp approach to recording results or the crucial scene where Morbius disses the Nobel committee, an act which we don’t even get to see. Seriously, all the best moments don’t happen on screen – we’re told them after the fact by exposition dumps.

I mean, who has their protagonist invent a fake source of blood then spend most of the film explaining why this incredible invention doesn’t work for vampires…? I mean, I looked up ‘writing oneself into a corner’ on the internet, and the image was the poster for this film.

And a blood replacement that’s saved more lives than penicillin? Go and have a lie down because you’re drunk.

Morbius does not make science sexy nor does it do much for bats. It leaves medicine on the shelf looking ashamed with itself. As for the young girl who’s put into a coma in the first act right there in the heart of Morbius’ facility as a big piece of establishing how the (forever) unnamed disease that three whole people have is very serious?

She’s never seen again.

Presumably she recovered, escaped and is now living a contented life somewhere upstate. At least that’s what I hope.

I’m nearly done. I’d truly like to be done but this film is so bad.

Morbius’ powers aren’t those of a bat mixed with a human. They’re not even those of a vampire. They simply change over the course of the film to be whatever the script needs them to be to get us to the next scene. They change, grow and eventually are so ridiculous I couldn’t even care. Look, we know the god of thunder controls lightning and is hard to hurt. We know Captain America is strong and fast and a big but righteous doofus. Those things are stable. Morbius is unstable – his powers changing every single time he uses them.

At every step this film crashes the car. From the first entirely pointless scene that segues into something unrelated with no explanation through to a love interest that gives Stockholm Syndrome a bad name this is terrible at Every. Single. Step.

In fact I’d make a case for using this as teaching material on how not to put together a movie.

What’s a real shame is that there are faint heartbeats of what might have been a better film vaguely visible in the wreckage of this one – but that’s all the better to make it teachable I suppose.

My final words on the matter? I watched this film so you don’t have to.

Rating? 2 sunburnt vampire bats out of 10

Stewart Hotston