MORBIUS

Stars: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Jared Harris, Adria Arjona, Al Madrigal, Tyrese Gibson and Michael Keaton.
Writers: Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless; based on the comic by Roy Thomas.
Director: Daniel Espinosa

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Despite the long hours that Sony Pictures have spent pumping life into the veins of their Marvel properties, the resulting films - whether box office behemoths like the Spiderman franchise or murky gunk like Venom - have, of late, been pretty crappy. It means that to non-comic types like your critic, the notion of having to first watch then conjure a few hundred words about Sony’s latest second-tier MCU anti-hero…well, I have hair to wash, too..

Wasting away in the grips of a degenerative blood disorder, Michael Morbius is driven to find a cure not just to relieve his own suffering, but to better the life of his friend, Lucien, aka ‘Milo’. They first form a bond as bed-bound boys under Dr Emil Nikols (Jared Harris), and remain chums into pained adulthood, where Morbius (a skeletal Jared Leto) becomes a Nobel prize-refusing researcher and Milo (played with menace, even when being nice, by Matt Smith) a couch-bound invalid.

It is the contention of Dr Morbius that vampire blood may hold regenerative properties and so, in a ship moored in international waters and alongside his loyal colleague Dr Bancroft (Adria Arjona), he instigates an experiment upon himself. And it works…kind of. The downside being that it transforms the doctor into a hunky vampire whose blood lust must be refreshed every few hours. Milo wants in on the new drug, but Morbius won’t allow his friend to suffer through the horrible side effects for a few hours of pain-free life. But Milo has his own ideas…

The most interesting aspects of director Daniel Espinosa’s film mirror those of David Cronenberg’s 1986 classic, The Fly. Vampirism as a form of body horror, the loss of one’s own physicality with an outcome that harms both the afflicted and those they love, gives Morbius a subtextual hook that adds to one’s investment in the good doctor’s moral journey. You have to search for it at times, given there’s not a lot of narrative meat on the Morbius bone, but the doctor’s connection to both Bancroft and Milo while still coming to grips with his new lethal self brings with it a compulsive watchability.  

Of course, it’s a comic-book trope as old as comic-books; while being questioned by Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal, playing the two dumbest detectives in film history, a blood-craving Michael scowls, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry,” a pointed reference to the Bruce Banner/Hulk mythology from which Morbius is drawn. Jared Leto does as much with the duality of the character as asked of him, committing to make-up prosthetics and stepping aside for his CGI stand-in when required.

While the film won’t upgrade the property from that second-tier comic realm alongside the likes of Venom (or, for DC fans, Swamp Thing or The Shadow), there is a layered psychology to Morbius which may be further drawn out in future (and better) iterations. 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 character’s key traits at all.