Underworld is about vampires and werewolves, but it isn’t your average horror movie. It’s not a horror movie at all, really. It’s more like what would happen if the directors of The Matrix staged a production of Romeo and Juliet at one of those geek parties where everyone wears fangs and acts all vampire-ish.
The film kicks off in medias res, with a mostly unexplained subway shootout that sparks interest despite its too-obvious resemblance to The Matrix’s famous building-lobby blast-o-rama. Bits of the fairly complex backstory are doled out sparingly; we’re given little to go on initially except vague references to a centuries-old feud between the vampires (or “Vampyres,” as they’re called here) and lycanthropes (imaginatively dubbed “Lycans”).
The vampires, once the ruling class of the film’s monster hierarchy, are a very political bunch; they’re more likely to bite each other in the back than on the neck. They live in gated mansions and drink blood from wine glasses. The Lycans live beneath the city in sewers and tunnels, hiding out from the vampires while they plan a kind of proletariat revolution of the lupine masses.
The heroine of the story is a vampire named Selene (Kate Beckinsale, looking like a darkly divine cross between Wesley Snipes’s Blade and leather-clad Matrix femme fatale Carrie-Anne Moss). She’s a Death Dealer, an assassin trained to hunt down and kill Lycans. Investigating the Lycans’ curious interest in a human named Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman, still looking pretty much like the jock doofus he played on TV’s Felicity), Selene finds herself first protecting him, then falling for him. This is apparently a big no-no for immortal Vampyres, but the only motivation we’re ever given for Selene’s attraction is when another female vampire purrs, “He’s attractive—for a human.” In any case, it draws the ire of both the Lycan leader (Michael Sheen), and her own vampire leader, Kraven (Shane Brolly, who evidently thinks playing a vampire means delivering every line through bared teeth).
Later events cause Corvin to become a Lycan, which is where the star-cross’d lovers angle comes in. This might have had possibilities, but director Len Wiseman’s comic-book conception leaves so little room for character development that the result is the usual action-flick romance—perfunctory as a pairing off at closing time, and convincing as a celebrity marriage.
On the other hand, Wiseman’s comic-book vision lends itself well to the usual action-flick action, and there’s plenty of it. This is one of those films built around one or two strong visual images—such as near the end, when a Death Dealer wielding two silvery metal whips squares off against a huge Lycan (played by co-writer Kevin Grevioux). The scene is short and almost entirely pointless, but it looks so damn cool that you keep coming back to it in your head hours afterward.
It should be noted that some of the action is gory enough to remind you of why vampires and werewolves are horror staples. But like I said, this isn’t horror. Nothing remotely frightening ever happens, and even the Lycan transformation scenes look rushed, as though they’re a bit of unpleasant business that has to finish quickly so another cool action sequence can start. (It’s always possible that these quick-change sequences are a stab at originality, but they only make me more certain that nothing in today’s computer-dominated effects arsenal can match what Rob Bottin did with makeup and latex in The Howling).
Ultimately, Underworld may be short on romance and even shorter on horror, but as an action fantasy it’s the current best of the many Matrix Rehashed clones out there. Take it on those terms, and you just might find it to your Lycan.
(2.5/4)