Underworld (2003) Review

Underworld (2003) Review

 

Underworld is about a war between vampires and werewolves (referred to as lycans, short for Lycanthrope, a term the biggest werewolf nerds out there will have heard before), a war that has been going on for centuries. Kate Beckinsale stars as Selene, a vampire assassin called a “Death Dealer” dressed in a skin-tight black leather outfit and armed with weapons made of silver, including small ninja-star-like disc blades. She gives a bleak voiceover in the opening moments, introducing the viewer to this feud, and right away it establishes a gothic feel and tone, though it intends to deliver more on the action and gore than suspense and atmosphere. It’s unfortunate, then, that the action scenes are not all that remarkable for the most part, and pretty sparse considering the two-hour runtime.

The first skirmish between the two species occurs in a subway amid a number of helpless, confused humans. There are many lycans and many vampires, and that’s one of the main problems I have with this movie: the excessive number of characters. It’s hard for many of them to make an impact, and most are there just to die in some cool way. There’s an African-American lycan with a voice so deep you can barely understand his handful of lines, there’s the vampire leader Kraven, the werewolf leader Lucian, and so many more. Bill Nighy plays an ancient resurrected vampire, Viktor, who is pretty cool, but mainly because he’s played by Bill Nighy. You don’t find out that much about his character, as cool as he is, but the full body prosthetics/makeup for him are superbly done. We don’t get a real good look at a werewolf until pretty close to the end. There are a couple decent-looking shots using cgi, but most of the digital effects are bad, and the practical werewolves are a bit clunky. You can tell they edited around them, but they still have some entertaining fight scenes with the vamps.

If there’s one thing I think everyone can agree on it’s this: the best thing about the Underworld series, and this first movie in particular, is the concept and elaborate lore. The idea of an ancient war between two classic movie monsters still going on in modern day is intriguing, but there are lots of other good concepts throw in, too, like the ancient vampires being resurrected after centuries, the experimentation trying to give one side an edge over the over, and the extensive back story to the conflict. The silver throwing blade isn’t the only inventive weapon: the lycans use ammunition rounds in their machine guns tipped with UV liquid. This is a nice twist on the concept of silver bullets usually being used to kill werewolves (which are also featured, of course). Not all of the weapons are cool, though. There’s a scene during the final conflict where a vampire fights a lycan with metal whips. It’s super ineffective and seems pretty idiotic when we know they have plenty of guns.   

Underworld suffers the most from having a muddied focus on story and characters. Selene makes for a dull lead, Kraven is a prick, Lucian isn’t great (despite being played by a pretty great actor, Michael Sheen) because he isn’t given enough screen time, and the only somewhat interesting character is Michael Corvin, played by Scott Speedman. Not so coincidentally, he’s the only main human character amid all these supernatural ones, but he doesn’t stay human for long. Lucien bites him and turns him into a lycan, and the main focus of the plot is on the vampires and lycans trying to capture Michael because of his special blood properties.

For such a cool premise, there are some pretty dumb moments throughout. At one point Michael wakes up and a female vampire is hovering over him. He’s startled (naturally), and so is she, so she leaps onto the very high ceiling and hisses. It’s a pretty typical supernatural ability. Michael then leaps out a window and falls like thirty feet, but he isn’t hurt in the slightest and runs off. Is it because he’s becoming a lycan? Well, it could be, but he was bitten a very short time before this scene, so it seems more like a screenwriting convenience than something excusable by supernatural powers. Speaking of that, he does the same thing again later and lands fine and isn’t hurt, but by that point it’s clear this is one of his new abilities. Being bitten by a vampire or lycan seems to turn these people into superheroes. 

Another questionable moment is when Selene is shooting at a pack of lycans running toward her down a hallway, and she realizes she can’t gun them down, so she shoots through the floor and drops down to the level below to escape. It’s cool, but could it happen? Well, Mythbusters actually tested this myth, and proved that no, it couldn’t. But the dumbest moment has to be when two police officers throw Michael in the back of a cop car and the full moon comes out. One of the cops cranks the volume up on the alt-rock radio station while Michael’s writhing in the back seat, and it makes for the most-cringe-worthy early 2000’s werewolf transformation possible, cut short by them pulling over and giving him an injection. The whole scene feels like a bad music video.

The problems go beyond just the characters and dumb moments. The entire script is exposition heavy, and there are some majorly corny lines (Lucien: “Soon he will be a lycan...soon he will come looking for us...” No one talks like that! And even Bill Nighy can’t salvage this pathetic, overused threat: “Time to die!”). It was written by Danny McBride, which really surprised me at first, but upon further inspection, it’s a different Danny McBride from the one who has been co-writing the newest Halloween films and is recognizable from comedies such as Pineapple Express and This Is the End. This other McBride was one of three guys behind the story/idea (another being director Len Wiseman), but for all the criticism I’ve levelled at this first movie, I will give them credit for having a killer premise rife with possibility.

No spoilers here, so I’ll wrap up this review for the first Underworld with these concluding thoughts: a cool idea for a movie that leaves a lot to be desired, but if all you want is a conflict between supernatural monsters that's visually interesting, I think it does enough right to be worth watching. As I proceed with the rest of the series, expect spoilers for previous movies throughout.