Vampire films are almost as old as film itself with early examples such as Nosferatu (1922) and Vampyr (1932), both of which are considered cinematic masterpieces. Morbius (2022) is more of a future cult classic, if anything.
After Jared Leto’s performance in 2021’s House of Gucci, wherein his take on an Italian accent made him sound like the missing Mario brother, my expectations for Marvel’s take on a vampiric anti-hero were six feet under. In the film, Dr. Michael Morbius, an orphan and medical child prodigy who suffers from an unnamed blood disorder, tries to fuse his own DNA with vampire bats to cure himself and his childhood friend, Milo. To no one’s shock—especially after three years of living in a pandemic believed to be the product of cross species transmission—the result of the experiment is disastrous: Morbius slowly becomes a vampire, and despite their codependent friendship, he keeps this a secret from Milo. CGI generated chaos ensues.
Visually, the film was a spectacle to behold. Although the film was set in New York, the overpoweringly blue filter would have led you to think it was a film about Cold War-era Eastern Europe. The highlight of the film was seeing vampires—harbingers of death—personified as lifesize anthropomorphic bats rendered in terrible CGI.
The film has all the hallmarks of a vampire film audience have come to expect: the vampire is vaguely foreign (in this case, both Morbius and Milo are Greek immigrants) and a homoerotic undertone as exemplified by Michael and Milo’s camaraderie. The underlying homoeroticism of vampires harkens back to the homophobia of yesteryear, where those of the LGBTQ+, had to remain discrete, thus blending in with heteronormative society. I also read an interesting tidbit a while back that vampires, which came to prominence in the West with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, tapped into the xenophobia of Victorian Britain, which had relatively liberal immigration policies compared to their European neighbours. Reflecting both homophobic and xenophobic sentiments, vampires have been a vessel to express societal anxieties. You would think that a vampire film made in the 2020s would eschew those undertones, but alas, it falls into the same trappings of the vampire film tradition.
Anyways, Morbius did little in adding to the canon of vampire films. It failed to deliver the sleek vampire film modern audiences are accustomed to, while using the overdone tropes of the genre. I will say though, the horrible CGI and campy acting, makes it likely to be remembered as a cult film to hate watch, on par with The Room or its brethren The Twilight Saga.