Parents' Guide to Morbius

Humorless and as flat and as uninspired as the Venom movies were, this by-the-numbers comic book action movie seems to be operating entirely on autopilot, ticking off plot boxes as it goes. Even the actors seem to be sleeping through their lines in Morbius -- not that there's anything worth hearing, anyway. What might have been deep discussions about life and death, good and evil, or power and weakness are kept strictly on the surface and solved without much bother or meaning. Moral implications are simply ignored. Action scenes are complicated by the strange decision to show vapor trails following the characters as they leap or are thrown across buildings, alleys, and subways.

The choice makes everything look smeary, like a cover-up for potentially underwhelming effects. (Occasionally the movie pauses for a nifty Matrix-like slo-mo shot, which helps clarify things.) While Leto and Smith have the lion's share of Morbius' chunky-sounding dialogue, and while they try to keep hysterics to a minimum, it all comes off sounding more like reading than speaking. The rest of the cast has so little to do that they're barely worth mentioning. And a "surprise" that comes at the end is hardly that, given that the actor in question has been featured in trailers and in the film's credits. Its promise of more "Morbius" to come is less of a promise and more of a warning.