It’s definitely NOT morbin time for this box office bomb.
This is why Morbius won’t be reaching cult status any time soon.
In July of 2022, Daniel Espinosa's film "Morbius" was re-released in theaters to utter indifference.
When the film was first released in early April of 2022, it was met with critical dismissal
and relatively modest numbers, and it didn't take the irony-mongers very long to begin
sarcastically overpraising the film.
The phrase "It's Morbin' Time" began to enter the temporary lexicon, even to the point that
star Jared Leto playfully shared a video of himself reading a fake script with that very
title.
Living by the adage that there is no such thing as bad press, Sony Pictures leaned into
the ironic non-affection social media was heaping onto "Morbius," and decided to put
the film back into theaters with the hope that all those ironic internet fans would
buy tickets.
The film's secondary flop was proof that, despite the overwhelming chatter about it,
"Morbius" was not the ironic cult film that studio heads might have hoped it would be.
Audiences were in no mood to rewatch the Living Vampire, even if it was to mock him.
"Yeah, you look downright robust."
"Well, I have good days and bad…pilates helps."
The lesson here is simple: Cult films cannot be forced.
They must happen organically.
Take Paul Verhoeven's "Showgirls," one of 1995's more notorious bombs.
A big-budget, oversexed showbiz story, "Showgirls" told the story of a dancer as she attempted
to rise to stardom through the Las Vegas strip show world.
The film was bloated, expensive, and, despite its copious nudity, not at all sexy.
It bombed horribly, and attracted the attention of the notorious Golden Raspberry Awards as
one of the worst movies of the year.
Not long after "Showgirls" ended its first run in theaters, MGM tried to pull off a "Morbius,"
and hoped to capitalize on the film's infamy by putting it back in theaters as a campy,
ironic classic.
The advertising shifted to a kitschier leopard-print motif, and the studio attempted to roll with
its immediate reputation as a movie so bad, it was good.
In Los Angeles, it was booked as a midnight movie.
After all that, "Showgirls" tanked a second time.
It took many years of reconsideration and repeated analysis of "Showgirls" before audiences
came to understand how strange, campy, queer, and enjoyably terrible the picture actually
was.
The studio's re-release of "Showgirls" didn't bolster its reputation as a camp classic.
It was the film's fans that did it.
Only after the culture had generally shifted over the course of a decade did special edition
DVDs of the movie finally begin to sell.
It's worth noting that both "Morbius" and "Showgirls" have looked to Jim Sharman's 1975
musical "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" as a model of success.
"Rocky Horror," against all odds, remains the unchallenged queen of the midnight movie
set, attracting large crowds of curious teens and aging weirdos for decades.
That film's mixture of music, oddness, celebrity, over-the-top performances, and aggressive
queerness allowed it gain a permanent toehold in the pop consciousness.
It has become its own scene; a movement unto itself.
Over the years, several films have attempted to sell themselves as pre-packaged cult movies,
as the next "Rocky Horror."
They never paused to realize that, well, we already have a "Rocky Horror," and the feeling
that film captured isn't easy to reproduce.
Whether we're talking about a deliberately campy film or a movie that tried to take itself
so seriously that it ended up being campy and goofy, it's clear that cult appeal cannot
be manufactured.
The distributors of "Morbius" were operating on the false assumption that an aggressive
ad campaign could simply conjure a cult response out of thin air.
"Rocky Horror" didn't set out to be a cult hit.
It happened because people started to respond to it and just never stopped.
Cult films gain traction among their followers typically because they are, somehow, a little
off-center.
They either need to be made by a weird person, or they need to possess an element of fascinating
failure.
The filmmakers sought to make something genuine and entertaining, but made so many bad, unusual
decisions that the finished product comes out looking like a total mess.
That's how you get things like "Showgirls," for example.
"Morbius" had the potential to be of the latter camp.
The irony is, unfortunately, that "Morbius" is almost too competent.
"Woo!
We've evolved!"
It's easy to wrap your head around a mad scientist who turns himself into a half-vampire bat
monster, even within the context of a superhero universe.
And while there are some truly weird things in "Morbius," there's nothing so odd that
it lands in midnight movie territory.
The bottom line is that re-releases don't make a cult movie, so no matter how many theaters
"Morbius" ultimately plays in, it'll be up to fans to decide if the film has any cult
appeal.
If the cult audience is there, it will come.
If it isn't ... then Morbin' Time is at an end.