“Morbius” was released April 1, 2022, and was directed by Daniel Espinosa. It stars Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, and Tyrese Gibson.

It tells the story of Michael Morbius, a doctor who suffers from a rare blood disease, and has worked his entire life to find a cure for himself as well as others. When he finds a potential cure by merging human DNA with that of bats, he becomes an unrecognizable monster thirsty for blood.

To start, “Morbius” was originally supposed to be released in 2020. However, with the ongoing pandemic, the film was delayed a whopping six times from its original planned release date.

Unfortunately for this film, it is very apparent why it had been delayed so many times, leading it to be described in one word: generic.

The acting is fine for the film, but I never felt genuinely invested in the characters. For example, Michael Morbius is never given a character arc in this film, and has no interesting characteristics that justify him being named the main protagonist.

The special effects are also noticeably average with many cheap slow-motion shots and digitally enhanced scenes that never let you truly see what is going on in the movie.

With this, the film does not have a defining feature about it that separates it from other action films, let alone superhero films.

While the acting and special effects are average at best, the story and the editing are notably unforgivable.

The film does not display a cohesive story with scenes that logically flow into the next at all. Occasionally in this film, a character will be in a scene very abruptly, without any idea of how much time has passed or a good sense of where they are.

Many characters in the film also change motivations at a jarring rate and do things that make no sense considering the scene that came before it.

“Morbius” feels like a film that had many ideas and concepts that it wanted to tackle but was just jumbled together to desperately create a superhero story worth releasing in theaters. Due to this, “Morbius” is a film that never should have left the writer’s room.

If there was any aspect of this film that I can say was slightly compelling, it would be the potential character conflict of Michael Morbius.

If handled correctly, the story of a man so desperate and determined to help people with a cure but turns into a monster in the process could have been entertaining. The idea, if executed properly, could have shown a great moral dilemma with the main character having to find a way to stop hurting people as a result of his own ignorance.

But, as stated before, this is not the case.

In the end, “Morbius” is a frustrating, bland, and incomprehensible film that fails in so many ways that it comes off as extremely unfinished.

My overall rating: 1/5

Drew Coffey is a freshman television and video production major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or at akcoffey@eiu.edu