Morbius was a character I mostly avoided back when I used to read Marvel comics on a regular basis. Sure, he showed up from time to time in a Spider-Man book, but I was mostly content to pretend that vampires were not a part of the Marvel universe. When I heard that a movie was in the works -- not connected directly to the highly successful MCU but, like Venom, somewhere off to the side of mainstream -- I wasn't terribly eager to see it. Hence, when it came out in theaters, I was happy to wait until it was available to stream at home.

When it popped up on Netflix, I set aside an evening to watch it. I'm glad I waited.

The failings of this movie don't lie at the feet of its star, Jared Leto, whom comic-book movie "fans" love to hate. His performance as Dr. Michael Morbius is fine, exactly what it needs to be, but the script and direction let him down.

Morbius feels like it's going for a visual aesthetic that never completely gels. Through medical experimentation to cure some lifelong, ill-defined infirmity, our hero gains vampire bat powers that are never fully explained -- but somehow they include super hearing, super strength and strange smoky chemtrails from his body whenever he moves at super speed. And yes, bats do fly, but they need wings to do so, which Morbius does not have.

He also needs to feed ruthlessly and voraciously on human blood, which might jive with our current understanding of mythical vampires, but has nothing to do with vampire bats. Bats do not have the ability to alter their appearance at will. Also, I'm not aware that bats have the power to influence the behavior of other bats, nor can they heal injured bats simply by flying around them.

The superpowers in this movie simply do not make sense within the boundaries established by the film itself.

The film creates relationships -- with girlfriend and fellow researcher Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), lifelong mentor and treating physician Dr. Emil Nicholas (Jared Harris) and lifelong chum and eventual antagonist Loxias "Milo" Crown (Matt Smith) -- in order to make the audience feel something when they are broken, but they are never developed to the point that we really care. There are buddy FBI agents Stroud and Rodriguez (Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal), who seem like they're going to be important to the story -- possibly even allies by the end -- but they never evolve into anything interesting.

And the CGI fight scenes never look even remotely realistic.

Parts of the movie dragged endlessly, to the point that I looked for other things to do while watching. I can't remember before so frequently checking how much time was left in a Marvel or Marvel-related movie. I really wanted this one to end.

Morbius probably would have worked better if director Daniel Espinosa had gone full-on horror film. The trappings are there, and a few scenes hint at what it might have been. It's a shame it never fully came together.

Oh, two mid-credits scenes starring Michael Keaton as the Vulture from the Spider-Man movies make an unlikely connection between franchises. It certainly raises questions -- like, why is he even there? -- but with no sequel planned, they likely will never be answered.