I am writing this week’s column, as it happens, from Cluj in Romania, on a visit to the Transylvania film festival, where the sunny days are long, spirits are high, and the undead threats you might usually look out for on a trip to Transylvania seem very far at bay. We don’t much consider vampires in mid-summer, but then, with Stranger Things fever in the air, perhaps spooky season has come early: Sony has taken it as an opportunity to release Morbius on VOD, a darker-leaning Marvel comic adaptation that hits offguard viewers with the dual terrors of modern vampires and Jared Leto at his most mannered.
But it’s actually reasonably good fun, balancing light goth-horror stylings with a suitably self-aware silliness – all a million miles from Bram Stoker. Leto plays a gifted biochemist, Dr Michael Morbius, who hits on a novel cure for his rare blood disease that entails blending his DNA with that of a vampire bat. Somehow, the brilliant scientist can’t see coming what anyone passingly familiar with his franchise stable-mate Spider-Man could, and vampiric mayhem ensues. Swedish director Daniel Espinosa guides it all with spooky flash, and Leto, a performer who comes with a trusty never-knowingly-underacted guarantee, is in his menacing element.
