Morbius review: Boring though short!

MORBIUS

Producers: Avi Arad, Lucas Foster, Matthew Tolmach

Director: Daniel Espinosa

Cast: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson

Genre: Thriller

Platform of Release: Theatres

Rating:

By Jyothi Venkatesh

It is a film which revolves around what happens when an ailing genius finally manages to invent a cure for his rare blood disease, but it infects him with a form of vampirism instead. He gets the superpowers, but it also turns him into a killer. Can he save the world from himself and the one who wants to misuse his invention? Dr Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), ‘the living vampire’ has been slowly dying of a rare blood disease all his life — so naturally, the cure is for him to go hunting for vampire bats in South America, something which every reasonable doctor/patient does, of course.

Like most of the Marvel movies, this one too is essentially a story of the good versus the evil. Dr. Michael Morbius is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, who has suffered from a crippling blood disease since childhood, but his ailment doesn’t stop him from helping others. He succeeds in creating a cure for his own disease that can help millions, but it soon becomes a curse, as it turns him into a blood-sucking thirsty vampire.  Morbius does whatever it takes to stop him from taking innocent lives, but his surrogate brother Milo (Matt Smith) isn’t all that evolved. Suffering from the same disease as Morbius, the resentful Milo embraces the demonic powers of the new ‘cure’ and unleashes a reign of terror in the city. The wafer thin plot is about how he is stopped on his track by Dr. Morbius.

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At times the film does sound illogical as well as absurd like for example, a prime murder suspect goes around sipping coffee with his fiancé in a crowded café even when the cops are hot on his trail. He casually walks out in a hoodie and no one recognizes him despite being all over the news.

As far as performances go, Jared Leto lends himself easily into the character of Morbius with his typical constantly brooding looks and mysteriously deep eyes that change colour every now and then. The CGI work, especially on the facial features, is quite intriguing and scary. Matt Smith and Adria Arjona are just about good as Milo and Martine respectively, but it should be also said that it’s also because the overall writing of the story and the characters is quite standard, which doesn’t leave them with much scope to perform.

Unfortunately, this movie is devoid of depth. It is emblematic of a system that places amusement park wonderment above sturdy storytelling. It is almost a shame that Morbius is tied to the Marvel universe at all, given that the inclusion brings with it franchise expectations that don’t serve the characters key traits at all. To sum up, I’d say that the film in spite of being short is also boring! And that’s a death knell for anything coming out of Marvel Comic Universe.