Morbus

Initial Thoughts?

Vera Bradley: For our optimal viewing pleasure, Mona and I watched the first half hour of this movie, the last 20 minutes, and 5 minutes from the middle. This is MORE than enough to get the gist of the movie. Honestly, the premise of Morbius is pretty smart (which makes sense, as it was a comic first)– a scientist with a blood disease begins researching and experimenting with vampire bats as they have natural anticoagulants, but then green goblins himself into a vampire. However, the execution wasn’t great, and in addition to really cheesy attempts to make the movie seem “cool” in classic Marvel fashion, it felt really boringly predictable.

Mona Bloodstick: Not really any initial thoughts, I have been begging Vera to watch this movie with me for a very long time, in fact since the original immaculate conception of this blog.

1: How did this movie handle classic vampire tropes?

VB: Morbius is kind of like if a vampire was a werewolf. As opposed to a classic vampire, which is a reanimated corpse, he is an animal hybrid that at times is human, and at other times is supernatural. Like I said, interesting concept, meh execution.

MB: I don’t really wanna think about this one, the screen was really dark so I couldn’t really tell what was going on. But Morbius works with mice and stuff a lot, and his friend and him are super weak but also really rich so it’s difficult for me to feel bad for them even though they are in the hospital for weak people.

2: Any good kills?

VB: People definitely died, but it wasn’t that cool.

MB: I think we might have missed a lot of the kills but it’s ok. Jared Leto kills Matt Smith and also his love interest maybe, but maybe not.

3: How does this movie deal with the curse of eternal existence?

VB: This movie deals more with the curse of bloodlust than of eternal existence.

MB: Hmmhmmhmm. I’m mostly surprised that Jared Leto bore the brunt of this movie while I didn’t even realize the Doctor Who guy was in it. They did a good job with the makeup. With the right makeup anyone can look eternal.

4: Sex appeal?

VB: OMG Jared Leto is so sexy EEEEE he’s so cool and charismatic let’s all join his cult!!!!

MB: Not any visible sex appeal but I was always intrigued by the love interest’s ponytail braid. OUCHIE. She always had that thing on and it made me massage my head.

5: Would I want to be a vampire in this universe?

VB: No; similarly to Sinners (though it pains me to make the comparison), it makes you just really violent and evil. Also it seems like the process of injecting the serum (how they turn into a vampire in this movie) is suuuuper painful.

MB: Who would I want to be if I was in this movie? I don’t know. Is Morbius even a vampire? Why can he go out in the daylight (at least I think he did, he might have been on the bus)? If I was in a Marvel movie, I would totally want to be Spiderman. I have a Spiderman t-shirt, I used to have two but one got too small for me (boob job).

Final thoughts?

VB: It wasn’t great. There’s no real reason to watch this– the only reason we did was because of our burning passion to watch every vampire movie. That said, it is also not the worst vampire movie I’ve watched, for what that’s worth.

MB: Not as bad a movie as Crash (2004), but horrible compared to Crash (1996).

“And here I thought you were just another jacked up dumbshit”

It's Morbing time, XOXO, Vera and Mona,

Bunnicula

Initial Thoughts?

Vera Bradley: I don’t know why I was expecting this to be live action. I don’t know how that would even have worked. But I really had not realized it was animated- what a surprise! This feels like a bootleg Scooby Doo episode- the animation is incredibly similar.

 
Mona Bloodstick: Just like Scooby Doo…and I LOVE Scooby Doo. Cept we’re kind of missing the eye candy (see “sex appeal” section).

1: How did this movie handle classic vampire tropes?

VB: Some nice classics, with a twist. Bunnicula is part bat, can use telekinesis, and has grave dirt in his coffin. The twist is that he drains vegetables of their juice instead of people of their blood– Bunnicula walked so Marceline could run! Something a little funny though is that through most of the film, all the characters were HORRIFIED about the vegetables being drained of juice– it was an unholy mystery of the gravest importance. But at the end when they decided Bunnicula was not a vampire (he is though), they were all like oh lol he was just eating juice because he is a rabbit. I am so confused– what is the difference???????????

MB: Agree with Vera–great twists on some good classics. The townspeople remind me of various Twilight Zone episodes where they get all freaked out for no reason and then learn a valuable lesson.

2: Any good kills?

VB: Not really, as this is a children’s movie. I will say though, the violent hatred of the townspeople could very well have led to murder (of the lapine variety), who saw a few white tomatoes and within days became convinced that their neighbor’s rabbit was a vampire. I mean they were right, but still ???

MB: Lots of withered vegetables.

3: How does this movie deal with the curse of eternal existence?

VB: It is not really covered.

MB: Is Bunnicula even immortal?

4: Sex appeal?

VB: Not super applicable here.

MB: No but I do like the Mulder and Scully banter between the dog and cat. Not really sure if that should go in the sex appeal section though :/.

5: Would I want to be a vampire in this universe?

VB: The mob mentality of the townspeople in this movie have me inclined to say no.

MB: Would I be a bunny vampire or a regular vampire in this universe? I believe that a genie would make me a bunny vampire, so absolutely not.

Final thoughts?

VB: This is a silly spooky kids movie with nice nostalgic Halloween vibes. I do not recommend watching the Youtube version we did that had AI retouched backgrounds though. I would also recommend the book over the movie– tbf I haven’t read it since elementary school, but I remember it being pretty good.

MB: I really enjoyed this movie but I do have one massive issue with it. When the children discover Bunnicula, they find a mysterious note.

The kids are all “omg a mysterious note written in Romanian!! The only part we can make out is Bunnicula!!”. NO. WRONG WRONG WRONG. THAT IS NOT ROMANIAN. To confirm this, I consulted some modern technology, I used a Cyrillic alphabet to identify the letters, and inserted it into a handy online translator. Go on, copy paste into a translator of your choice:

ПОЖМУЙСТА ПОБЕРЕТИТЕ МОЕГО ЗАЙЖИКА ЕГО ЗОВУТ “BUNNICULA„ ОН ОБЕРЕГАЕТ ТЕХ КТО ЕТО АЮЪИТ

And what result do you get?? RUSSIAN. NOT ROMANIAN. Romania stopped using the Cyrillic alphabet in the 1830s!! When Romania DID use Cyrillic, it looked completely different, so the fact that the children immediately thought it was Romanian is crazy. And Bunnicula would not be written that way–that would mean the rabbit’s name is VCIIISCIA. Perfectly incomprehensible. Anyways, please say something in the comment section if you have anything to add to this.

“Hank, what would you do if your neighbors woke you up at 1 am to tell you there was a vampire rabbit in your house?”

XOXO Vera and Mona