Underworld
January 12, 2004Grade: C+
Saw Underworld this past weekend at the Village Cinema 8. Thankfully, that is a $2 movie theatre or else I would have felt cheated.
The plot unfolds in a confusing jumble of scenes but best as I could figure out, there’s a centuries-old war between two species of immortals–the vampires and the lycans (werewolves). Kate Beckinsale plays one of the vampires, Selene, a death dealer whose job is to hunt the lycans. Scott Speedman plays a human, Michael Covin, who has been transformed into a lycan but holds the key to ending the war between the species. Selene of course falls in love with Covin and has to decide where her loyalties lie.
The big problem with this movie is that it’s a small budget movie with big-budget ambitions. The werewolf effects in particular look very cheesy. With maybe $20 million more in the effects budget they could have pulled it off, and then the stylish goth look might have worked better. You just can’t do this kind of flick without investing more in the effects to make them believable.
The other problem is that the way the plot unfolds is so damned confusing, I don’t think I finally got what was going on until maybe 30 minutes into the flick. They needed to find a more linear way to explain the premise.
In the end, this is a disappointment. It has some really interesting ideas and some good scenes, but the sum of the parts just doesn’t add up to a good movie. Thank God I only paid $2 to see it.
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