Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has devoted his life to creating artificial blood, but he publicly declines to accept the Nobel Prize because he still hasn’t found a cure for the rare blood disease that is affecting not only him but also his best friend, a man he calls Milo (Matt Smith) for reasons that are too stupid to get into. Using the genes of Costa Rican bats, Morbius finally develops a cure, but there’s a side effect. Taking the cure transforms someone into a living vampire. Morbius is now strong and fast, but he also has a craving for blood. Morbius knows that the cure is even worse than the disease, but Milo doesn’t care and takes it anyway. Now, there are two living vampires wreaking havoc in New York City.

It’s not just New York that suffers due to Morbius. It’s also Sony Pictures, which released the film to terrible reviews and bad box office on April 1st, 2022. After the film was yanked out of theaters, someone at Sony noticed that a lot of people on Twitter were posting a meme that featured Morbius. Mistakenly thinking that this meant Morbius had become a so-bad-it’s-good cult phenomenon, Sony rereleased Morbius in theaters on June 3rd, and the film flopped a second time.

I know that I groaned when I first read that Sony was developing a Morbius film to be a part of their “extended Spider-Man universe.” That’s because Morbius was always one of my favorite Marvel characters, and I knew Sony would probably never be able to do the character justice. I was right. Morbius is mostly interesting as a throwback to what comic book films were like before the MCU and Zack Snyder came along. There’s no real affection for the characters and none of the type of big moments that usually made even the least inspired of the MCU films worth watching. It looks cheap, it feels cheap, and the whole thing is totally by the numbers. Matt Smith is given little to do as the villain, and, for all of his reputation for eccentricity, Jared Leto gives an anemic performance. He lets his beard and his hair do most of the acting. The worst thing about it is that it’s just boring. In the comic books, Morbius mixed his brilliance with a feral bloodlust. That’s what made him such a memorable character. In the movie, he’s just Jared Leto.

Morbius the Living Vampire deserved better.