BEFORE: I watched "Underworld" last October, and I wasn't too crazy about it - too many characters and too much long, convoluted history between the two clans - the werewolves and the vampires. But I feel the need to give the franchise another chance - maybe this one will explain something about what happened in the first film, since I'm still pretty confused. I will review the plot of the first film on IMDB first...
THE PLOT: Underworld: Evolution continues the saga of war between the vampires and the Lycans. The film goes back to the beginnings of the ancient feud between the two tribes.
AFTER: Nope, I'm still not feeling this franchise. At least there were fewer characters this time out, since so many died in the first film, so there was more of a focus on the two lead characters - the hot female vampire and the studly male werewolf - though now he's some kind of werewolf/vampire hybrid, hence the "evolution" in the title.
But still there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to anyone's actions - or maybe there is, but every time a character stopped to talk and explain something, my eyelids drooped and I drifted off. It happened way too many times tonight for me to salvage any kind of plot understanding. Yes, I had a rough day at work, and yes, I'm still tired from working Comic-Con and being loopy on painkillers, but still... You'd think the action sequences would be enough to keep me awake and interested, but they all just kind of flashed by and ran together to create a patchwork of men with batwings and people turning into wolves.
There's some kind of relationship between the werewolf clan and the vampire clan that stretches back centuries to a common origin, and there's some deception over who killed who 600 years ago, and there's betrayals and funky keys and hibernation machines, and you know what? I just don't care. I don't know if I failed to pay attention to this movie, or the movie failed to entertain me, but in the end the result was the same. Like the "Matrix" saga, I just want to get it out of the way and scratch it off my list.
Let me emphasize this, because it seems unusually significant - werewolves are fighting vampires, and somehow it's boring as dirt. It doesn't seem possible, but there it is.
Starring Kate Beckinsale (last seen in "Serendipity"), Scott Speedman (last seen in...um..."Underworld"), Tony Curran (last seen in "Miami Vice"), Derek Jacobi (last seen in "The Golden Compass"), and Steven Mackintosh (last seen in "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels")
RATING: 2 out of 10 pistols that somehow shoot like Uzis.
SPOOK-O-METER: 6 out of 10. I can't knock the quality of the effects, I just wish there was more of a story to go with them.
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