I have never been a fan
of the Underworld franchise. The fourth
installment, Awakening was the only one I genuinely liked, and even then, it
was pretty much for all the wrong reasons.
Just because I dug it, doesn’t mean I remembered what happened in it. Luckily, there’s a quick wrap-up of the
previous installments right in the beginning to get the audience up to speed
before the movie starts.
Werewolves are winning
the centuries-long war between werewolves and vampires. Desperate, the vampires offer the outcast
“Death Dealer” Selene (Kate Beckinsale) a truce so that she may train the next
generation of werewolf killers.
Naturally, she is betrayed and it isn’t long before both sides come
looking for her long-lost daughter, whose blood might end the war once and for
all.
The plot is full of
double-crosses and triple-crosses between the two royal monster houses. It all plays like a moronic version of
Shakespeare with fangs. It’s also sorely
lacking the earnest silliness that made Awakening so enjoyable.
There is one nice touch
early on when Beckinsale is being hunted by the werewolves. They try to capture her by shooting multiple
grappling hooks into her. After she
kills them all, she walks away nonchalantly, not even noticing that the hooks
are still inside her and she’s dragging the grappling guns behind her. It’s all downhill from there.
The action sequences
are largely unexciting and quickly get repetitive and monotonous. The stuff with the boring werewolf villain in
particular is lame. They establish that
bullets have no effect on him, so what do the vampires continue to do? Shoot clip after clip into him! It would be called overkill, if only they
could actually kill him. It should also
be noted that the CGI werewolves (I refuse to call them “Lycans”) are pretty
bad.
The best new character
is the sexy evil vampire queen. You can
tell they really wanted Eva Green for the role.
Her vampy sultriness would’ve been perfectly suited to play the
character. Laura Pulver is okay, but she
can’t pull off the campy scenes that require her to chew the scenery and look
sinister at the same time. Take for
instance the scene where she makes her underling go down on her while she talks
about her diabolical plans. If Green had
done this scene it would’ve been amazing.
With Pulver in the role, it just sort of feels awkward.
I can’t honestly say
that this is the worst Underworld movie, but if I ever see another
Blurry-Flashback-Induced-by-Someone-Tasting-Blood scene, it’ll be too soon.
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