My two-and-a-half star review of the original UNDERWORLD concluded with — “In the end, the filmmakers set up a promising possibility for a strong sequel. Hopefully, they use the first film as the backstory and focus on developing Selene and Michael’s relationship as the main crux of any future installments in this inevitable franchise.” The filmmakers must have missed my review.
We do feel in this film a greater connection between vampire Selene (Kate Beckinsale, PEARL HARBOR) and werewolf/ vampire hybrid Michael (Scott Speedman, TV’s FELICITY), but it goes nowhere. The Romeo & Juliet-like tale is gone. There’s little internal struggle present here, just Selene and Michael running from the bad guys.
In a preface, we witness the origins of the struggle between the first film’s main villain Viktor (Bill Nighy, LOVE ACTUALLY) and the original vampire Marcus Corvinus (Tony Curran, BLADE II). Viktor wants to destroy Marcus’ werewolf brother William (Brian Steele, HELLBOY), but Marcus wants to unite with his raging sibling to form a new race of immortal creatures.
Now in the present, Marcus is awoken from a centuries long sleep and goes looking for Selene, who killed Viktor and may hold the key to releasing William from his prison. Meanwhile, a mysterious wealthy man named Alexander (Derek Jacobi, GLADIATOR), who has is own private SWAT team, is also looking for the key.
The main problem is that the film is quite redundant. Why have a preface in the past if you’re going to have the same information told to the main characters later? The film does this more than once. UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION feels like it’s buying its time to fill a feature length.
Then when the film seems to get to a bold development, it cheats like heck in the end, robbing all the emotion from the previous event. The first film’s chief problem was that it was too interested in its backstory and not interested enough in developing the relationship between Selene and Michael. Here, we get zero character development and no nifty mythology. The potential of the world is lost.
Director Len Wiseman presents a good look, especially working with his special make-up team to create Marcus’ character design. Wiseman is obviously in love with the beauty of his gorgeous wife Beckinsale, dressing her in tight pleather and even making her bare some skin in one scene. She looks good and the film looks good, but without a compelling story it all just feels like a vampire/werewolf rip-off of THE MATRIX.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
