Movie Info
Movie Name: Underworld: Evolution
Studio: Lakeshore Entertainment
Genre(s): Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Action/Adventure
Release Date(s): January 20, 2006
MPAA Rating: R
Get ready for more vampire gun fights!
Viktor (Bill Nighy) is dead, and Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman) are on the run from the newly revived Marcus Corvinus (Tony Curran). Seeking answers about her past, Selene and Michael learn that they must locate the original source of the vampirism and lycanthropy and learn a tale of brothers brother William (Brian Steele) and Marcus. Teamed with a mysterious man named Alexander (Derek Jacobi), Selene and Michael must find a way to end the war forever!
Directed by Len Wiseman, Underworld: Evolution is a gothic horror action-adventure movie. The movie is the second film in the Underworld series and a follow-up to 2003’s Underworld. The movie was met with mostly negative reviews but a big box office return.
Only in Underworld could a giant bat creature chasing a truck while a werewolf-vampire hybrid fights it be kind of boring…
The Underworld series is a strange blend of action, fantasy, and horror…the guy equivalent of Twilight. Like Twilight, however, the films are underdeveloped and over produced. The movie is like eye-candy (and debatable eye-candy at that) without much substance.
The story of Underworld: Evolution is a bit less garbled than the first film in the series simply because it is more action driven. The “on-the-run” format of the movie helps make it more of an adventure, but the random nature of the characters’ abilities seems pretty arbitrary and more a function of ways to continue the story.
The acting for Underworld: Evolution isn’t anything great either. I really want to like Kate Beckinsale in the movie, but she still feels more like she is cast as the “hot chick” that the writers didn’t give enough substance to (though she does play the cool and collected Selene decently). Like Selene, most of the characters however seem pretty flat and undefined despite the convoluted backstories. Derek Jacobi adds some class to the film with the death of Bill Nighy’s character in the previous film (though he has some scenes here).
Who’s afraid of the Big Blue Wolf?
If you are watching Underworld: Evolution, I hope you like blue. The film is tinted with blue look, and it is very overdone. It was half-way stylish in the first film, but here it feels like overkill. Stylized movies like this need a means to give an overall feel to the movie, but it also frequently makes it too dark to see what is going on. The action sequences of the movie are decent, and they seem to be a bit more cleaned up and better edited than the first movie. The Marcus Corvinus bat design is kind of interesting, but looks awful at times, and the werewolves continue to be rather weak.
Underworld: Evolution is just another entry in an average to below average series. Most video game movie strive to not feel like a video game, here you have a series that does feel like a video game and shouldn’t since it is original content…making it all the more frustrating. Underworld: Evolution is followed by the prequel film Underworld: Rise of the Lycans in 2009 but the story here picks up again in Underworld: Awakening in 2012.
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