‘Morbius’ Review: Jared Leto in a Vampire Supervillain Origin Story That’s Neither Original Nor a Good Story
31.03.2022 - 03:21
/ variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIn “Morbius,” Jared Leto sports his signature beard and long silky black hair parted down the middle, though for a good stretch he doesn’t give off his usual Jesus of Beverly Hills glow. That’s because he plays the sickly Dr. Michael Morbius, who is cadaverous and sunken-eyed, hobbling around on a pair of forearm crutches.
Morbius, a science wizard, has spent his life trying to come up with a cure for his mysterious ailment; along the way, he invented artificial blood. But now he’s going for broke. In the film’s opening sequence, he emerges from a helicopter in the mountains of Costa Rica and enters a cave to capture a gigantic flock of vampire bats, whose DNA he plans to extract to create a powerful new serum, which he’ll inject into his own mottled veins.
It’s an experiment at once bold and beyond the pale, in direct violation of medical ethics, which is why he conducts it on a cargo ship off the coast of Long Island, with eight mercenaries in tow. It is also, of course, an experiment destined to go very, very wrong. In Marvel movies like the ones featuring the origin stories of the Hulk or Captain America, these kinds of experiments tend to blow up in spectacular, mind-and-body-bending ways.
But in “Morbius,” there’s not much ado about what happens to Michael Morbius. Working with his loyal assistant, Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), he injects the serum and instantly morphs into a thirsty kinetic vampire, his skin stretched over his cheekbones, his teeth a gallows row of pointy incisors, his pupils scrambled like Jackson Pollock pinpoints.Even if you’re not familiar with the “Morbius” comics, which first appeared in 1971, we’ve seen monsters like this one many times before — in
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