Review of Underworld: Awakening (2012) by Corsair21 — 23 Aug 2014

At first I have to admit that I'm no Underworld Fan of the first hour, I actually didn't even hear of the first film when it came out in 2003. It must have been one afternoon in 2007 when I saw a TV trailer announcing the airing of Underworld in the late evening the upcoming weekend. I didn't know what it was all about and was actually like "What the F...?!?" when I saw the skull of the vamire lord awaking in the underground (actually thought it was some kind of zombie then) and thought it might be some kind of cool horror movie, so I marked it for watching. But what I actually watched on this particular evening was one of the best vampire movies of all time (for me personally at least):

Already that first jump of Selene down from that Church and directly walking on in the first scene caught my attention. Then there was the first contact between Selene, the super cool death merchant with centuries of experience in hunting down lycans, and Michael, who stumbled into this century-old war between the two supernatural races with no idea what is actually going on. Then there was this mythology of how the Vampires and Lycans actually arised and which both of them (Michael & Selene) need to investigate much deeper than they are supposed to by the Vampire lords, Michael to survive, Selene to solve the riddles of her past, while both of them begin to understand that they not only need each other to survive, but also begin to develop feelings for the other one.

The whole Mythology and Background story created within this first movie was so huge and deep that it was rightfully followed by "Underworld: Evolution" and "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" in the folowing years. I personally think "Rise of the Lycans" actually fits very good into the storyline while "Evolution", still a good movie and clearly belonging rightfully to the series, had it's weaknesses, altough I can't really tell what it was that I felt missing in this one. And now we finally have "Underworld: Awakening" finally here.

So let's summarize my overall Impressions on this one: Yay, Selene's back! Okay, Humans suddently noticed Vs and Ls (why actually?), and why do they actually posses the Vampire/Lycan Weaponry so fast (there is clearly a movie called "Underworld: The Purge" missing somewhere). But okay, let's focus on the storyline again. Selene is held captive by the humans in some laboratory but someone helped her to wake up. And of course all of her gear is stored right at the location where she has been held in cryostasis for all this time (12 years). To get out of the laboratory she has to fight her way through the complex, which of cours is not that much of a challenge of a skilled death merchant like her. Later on she meets a little girl named "Subject 2" (if there was actually a scene when she was renamed to "Eve" I must have missed that). This girl is a human-vampire-lycan-hybrid (like Michael) and (surprise, surprise) the daughter of Selene and Michael.

Considering the way she finds her daughter, which she has never seen before, and the circumstances under which she finds her and what Eve is capable of, I would have expected either that Selene would mistrust Eve at the beginning or directly feel that she is no harm and show more warmth for her daughter. Actually there could have been a development from suspicious mistrust towards an arising mothers instinct towards Eve. But neither of these two happens. Also, the way Eve was given birth or how she was created isn't a topic in the whole move. She is there and she is Selene's daughter. No backtalk! And oh, look: there are bad guys, no time, let's Rumble!

And this partucular situation could be viewed as an allegory to EACH character in this movie. As an "Underworld"-Veteran, I might get the one or other thing a little easier than a casual viewer, but there is still so much potential in this movie, if they only added much more dialogs properly acted by the cast. Okay, there is actually not much time that Selene has to get to know her Daughter, but I actually didn't feel any kind of relationship developing between both of them, and when Eve thanked Selene in one of the final scenes for coming back for her, and Selene replied "I promised it", it actually feels more like Selene rescued Eve to keep word rather than saving her daughter.

The CGI effects might could have been better at some point, but they are ok for my opinion. The lycan-decimating death merchant Selene is cool as always, altough she has to struggle with unsteady fitness at some points (One time she cracks through concrete roofs between two laboratories within a second, the other time she has to struggle with obstacles that I wouldn't have guessed to be suchlike for her). The big issue remains the plot / character development. The first Underworld movie had 128/116 Minutes, this one 88, which makes 40/28 Minutes difference. And I got the feeling, that "Underworld" had as much action scenes as "Awakening", too, plus Story.