Typical. Just like buses, you wait ages for a film starring someone called Jared to turn up and then one turns up with two of them!
One Jared is Jared Leto as the titular hero, Micheal Morbius - a super genius generic scientist who creates an artificial blood substitute. The other is Jared Harris as Dr. Nicholas, benevolent father-figure, and mentor and the character you just know will have to die to motivate our hero at sometime later on in the film. So, anyway, Michael, never Mike, and his absolute bestest friend in the whole wide world, Milo (Matt Smith) who have been BBFs ever since they were kids and first met in the same Greek hospital where they had to suffer thrice-daily blood transfusions for a mysterious blood disease that Morbius vows he will one day cure. It's good to know that two characters who love each other like brothers are going to be friends for life and not, you know, suffer a schism that sees one of them become the other's worstest enemy- E-VER!!!!!
ANYWAY! Cut to 25 years later where the boy Morbius has grown up to be the Oscar winning, method-actor and musician Jared Leto who is apparently so 'method' that according to Wikipedia - 'he often remains completely in character for the duration of shooting schedules of his films, even to the point of adversely affecting his health."
Meanwhile, his BFF, Milo has grown up to become Matt Smith, a self-made billionaire, who funds Morbius's research. And that's all the motivation you need for these two.
Then, through his own staggering stupidity, Morbius decides to splice vampire bat DNA into his own in an attempt to cure his disease.
SPOILER ALERT!
It doesn't.
Instead it transforms him into a vampire bat, but luckily (for him) because this is an utterly generic super hero movie, that doesn't mean he shrinks to the size of a mouse, grows crappy little wings, and hangs from the roof of a cave depositing large amounts of guano on the ground beneath him while squeaking and eating moths. No it means, he becomes super fast, can fly, has super strength, control bats and can echo-detect, you know, just like bats. It also surprisingly leaves him dumping guano everywhere. See, told you Leto was a method actor. Oh, and he's now developed a terrible lust for blood that sees him kill a literal boat load of mercenaries he hired for some undisclosed reason. This leaves him feeling a bit guilty and so he leaves his lab assistant behind and runs away to hide in plain sight until he's captured by the police.
Meanwhile, BBF Milo is rather annoyed when he learns that Michael has found a cure but refuses to share it because you know, side effects and so once BBFs become BEF - Best Enemies Forever and so begins the repetitive back and forth punch ups leading to the deaths of various characters to motivate Michael until the showdown between BEFs and then the obligatory double post credits where a super villain from the Marvel Universe turns up and suggests they team up.
Aaaand that's it.
At least I think that's what happened. It all takes place at night time, and so it's very murky and I did get bored and sort of lose interest and I finally nodded off, waking up in time to see the truly dreadful final punch-up and post credit guff.
I've read reviews where people have praised the horror aspect of the film, saying that's where it succeeds, I fell out of love with horror films 40 years ago, burning out on all the stalk and slash films of the 80s, and now whenever I see a loooooong hospital corridor with flickering lights and no other employees I know I'm being taken for a ride, so all the horror tropes and tricks just leave me bored.
This is Leto second effort at playing a comic book character, and apparently he's very picky about what projects he picks. Hmm, I wonder what his criteria is? His first comic book role was as the Joker in the truly awful Suicide Squad movie although he's a lot better in this than he was in that.
Sadly though, this is a dull, boring, 'Meh' movie, one that is just utterly predictable and genuinely unmemorable, I mean I actually guessed what the very second line of dialogue in the movie was going to be along with several other lines, so generic was it, and listening to the heavy clunking THUNK of each act falling into place and each plot point arrived just made me more lethargic. You too will recognise the oh-so familiar story beats and tropes this film throws at you, and so perhaps you can have some fun playing movie cliche bingo, to pass the brief, but not brief enough 104 minutes of this film.
4/10
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