I’m back after another break and I’m changing my schedule up very slightly. I’ll still be posting on Tuesdays and Fridays, but I will be moving my reviews of new films to Fridays and having Tuesdays be my write about whatever days. This is just because I tend to go to the cinema on s Wednesday, so it seems stupid to be waiting almost a week after I see a film to write about it. Anyway, now the admin stuff is out of the way onto the review. I was so, so, excited about Morbius (2022). Not because I had any prior knowledge or care for the character, or because I am a fan of superhero films. I was excited to see this film because it looked like it was going to be bad and sometimes, I just need to watch something a bit crap so I can appreciate the films I love more. That being said, I went into it with an open mind and the hope that it would surprise me. The film follows Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), a world-renowned blood scientist who has a deadly disease that is slowly killing him. In an attempt to find a cure, he creates a serum that accidentally turns him into a vampire, and he finds himself fighting to remain a hero despite the primal rage now inside him.
This film did end up surprising me, although absolutely not in a positive way. This was so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. Now, I don’t want to go overboard on it because it isn’t the worst film I have ever seen, but I am really, really struggling to find anything even remotely positive to say about it. The best I can do is praise Matt Smith’s performance as Milo. Not because it is particularly good, but it is entertaining. He is more than happy to chew the scenery and the film is at its most entertaining when he is on screen. But the character he is playing is cliched, one string, and hugely underdeveloped, which is a criticism of every character in this film. Technically the film is garbage. It is impressively ugly with almost no colour at all, and the amount of weird close-up shots and odd editing choices are so prevalent throughout the film’s runtime. It also suffers from the action scenes being completely uninteresting, and that is when you can make out what is happening. There are some shots in the final fight scene where you have no idea what you’re looking at because they just throw so much shit at your face. Add to this that you couldn’t care less about any of these characters, and I just had myself wondering what the hell I was doing this for.
The biggest issue I have with the film is its pacing. I should say that the film is consistent with its pacing in terms of keeping the ‘excitement’ up at a steady pace, but because of this, the pacing of its narrative is an absolute mess. Rather than telling a compelling and engaging story, it feels like the film is just like ‘and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens'. The underdevelopment I mentioned earlier is so clear. A great example of this underdevelopment comes shortly after Michael Morbius turns himself into a vampire and we see him in his lab where he proceeds to tell us about all his powers in voiceover. No scenes where he discovers what he can do in fun ways, they just tell us. It makes the film feel so rushed. There are several moments where a plot point is revealed or a twist occurs, but it was never set up that that was going to happen, and then things that feel like they are going to be paid off later are completely ignored. The film also has some of the worst dialogue I have heard in a film all year. The icing on that particular cake is when Morbius is in a police interview and he says, ‘I’m starting to get hungry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry’. Upon hearing this I almost threw up. However, possibly the greatest indicator of this film’s ineptitude is that it tricks you with its trailer. I won’t say how, but there is so much in the trailer that isn’t in the final film. Basically, it is a scam.
I was hoping Morbius may have strayed into a so bad it is good sort of territory, but it isn’t even close to getting there. It is terrible from top to bottom. Visually, technically, narratively, the performances (possibly with the exception of Matt Smith) are all garbage. To emphasise how much, I disliked this film I will compare my viewing experience with that of the film I watched immediately before, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022). The screen I was in for this was filled with kids who wouldn’t shut up or stop moving. I was sat immediately next to a very loud toddler and her even younger sister on one side, a young lad who wouldn’t shut up mentioning very obvious things he noticed throughout the film on the other, and a family behind me where one child was stomping their feet right in my ear and another kept pushing their feet into my chair. All of that, and I still had much more fun watching Sonic than I did watching Morbius. It is just that bad.
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