Movie Info
Movie Name: Underworld: Blood Wars
Studio: Screen Gems/Lakeshore Entertainment/LStar Capital
Genre(s): Action/Adventure/Horror
Release Date(s): November 24, 2016 (Ukraine)/January 6, 2017 (US)
MPAA Rating: R
It’s time for more vampire-werewolf gun fights!
The war against the vampires is at its tipping point and the vampires are on the run from the Lycans. As the Lycan search for Eve (India Eisley), Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and David (Theo James) try to rally the vampires in a final battle. Marius (Tobias Menzies) is coming for Selene, and her death might be inevitable…but even death might not stop a Death Dealer.
Directed by Anna Foerester, Underworld: Blood Wars is a sci-fi action horror movie. The fifth entry in the Underworld series, the movie follows Underworld: Awakening from 2012. The film received negative reviews and an average box office return.
Underworld has been a rocky ride. I was excited for the first Underworld film because vampires fighting werewolves is cool…but I was rather disappointed by it. Underworld continues to try to build the vampire-werewolf world, but like a lot of the previous sequels, the film just seems to muddle them.
Because you have to have a vampire betrayer that gets what is coming to them…
A lot of the thrust of Underworld: Awakening was the discovery by humans that vampires and werewolves were among them. It was something that the series was kind of building to and had a ton of potential…but this does nothing with it and returns a rather basic vampire/werewolf storyline that isn’t very different from the rest of the series. Selene seeks out help from _____ vampire clan and faces problems getting them on her side. It is rather mundane and not a very satisfying “ending” to the franchise.
Kate Beckinsale seems to be going through the motions for the film. She has Selene down and it is just a matter of what the story is going to be. Theo James as David continues to be rather one-dimensional, and the series finally officially writes off Scott Speedman’s Michael character that was kidnapped in Underworld: Awakening but just had archival footage and stand-ins to replace the actor (negating his significance to the vampire/werewolf bloodline). Lara Pulver is fine as the upstart vampire Semira, and Tobias Menzies just plays another werewolf leader out to kill vampires…the cast besides Beckinsale (and maybe Bill Nighy) never had much weight or development.
Isn’t this supposed to turn the Kraken to stone or something?
Visually, the Underworld movies continue to underwhelm. With such a high-profile movie, I expected the effects to get better or at least maintain. There is a lot of good work with light and dark, and the ominous gothic scenery, but the actual special effects (like on the always troublesome werewolves) is very so-so.
Underworld: Blood Wars is just another entry in a rather bland series. The potential fun of the films feels lost in the minutiae of the overly complicated (but not very interesting) history of the battle between the werewolves and vampires. With the movie, the Underworld saga ends at least for now…but I’m sure Underworld will surface again.
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