Underworld: Evolution

An immediate sequel to the events that went down in the original UNDERWORLD movie, this one follows the lead hotties – one a woman vampire and the other a male hybrid – as they attempt to get away from the top-dog vamp, who’s not very happy with them, while at the same time, trying to figure out why everybody wants their friggin’ slick necklace. Lots of blood, kickings of ass and dark action sequences ensue. In other words: my kinda party!

Well, color me surprised. I was really expecting this sequel to the equally surprising first installment of the UNDERWORLD series to suck the bloody big one, but props go out to filmmaker Len Wiseman for knowing what the hell the audience is looking for in a movie featuring vampires versus werewolves and that’s a whole ton of action, a little story to pad the way, plenty of blood and guts, a quick pace and let’s not forget…a hot lead girl in black leather kicking ass left, right and center! Kudos to the lovely Kate Beckinsale for continuing to look absolutely delectable in her tight-ass outfits, while at the same time conveying a hardass attitude and plenty of obvious physical abilities. You buy her as a hottie, but even more importantly, you buy her as a death-dealer and that’s what this series is all about. Sure, I could have done without the film’s overuse of flashbacks during its first 20 minutes or so, and despite having seen the original a few times, even I got a little confused with all of the names after a while, but other than those two negative points, the rest of the film moved at a clip that was equal to the expectations of popcorn lovers in the audience, with a chase underlining the film’s constant push forward, accentuated by a whole bunch of fun, bloody action sequences, featuring (you guessed it!) vampires fighting werewolves…mano-a-mano.

And further congratulations should go out to the studio who decided to make this an all-out R-rated affair, without which, I doubt that I would be so enthusiastic. With plenty of detailed kills, blood geysers, nasty language and ongoing creature carnage, there is no way that this film would have worked on any real level, had it been given the dreaded PG-13 rating. You might as well have released it as a 15-minute short if that had been the case. Thankfully, this movie doesn’t hold back on the cool stuff, starting with a medieval battle that starts it all off with a bang, and gives you a pretty good idea of what’s to come. It also provides insight into how impressive the creature transformations will be, as the CGI and fast-action cuts work very well here—not “quick edits”, but fast-action cuts…there is a difference. What ingratiated me to the film even more was its baddie, whom unlike the goof in the original (Kraven, was it?) was actually scary and acted like a friggin’ maniac, blue-eyes glowing and all. His badass wings/tentacle weapons were also part of his impressive package, all of which made for an engaging hunt from beginning to end. And if you think the film might fizzle out during its final act, think again, as Wiseman jacks it all up during its last 20 minutes with a cavalcade of plasmatic action from top to bottom, and a wicked helicopter blade kill topping the whole thing off like a blown-up cherry riding your emptied bag o’ popcorn. See it if you dig on action, vampires, werewolves, a little bit of story and plenty of bloody fun.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian