Film Review: Seriously Silly ‘Underworld: Awakening’ With Kate Beckinsale Will Put You to Sleep

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CHICAGO – There is a near-great movie opening this weekend that features a bad-ass, gun-toting chick who defeats any obstacle placed in her way. Despite what the advertising may have you believe, that movie is not “Underworld: Awakening”. (Hint: It’s “Haywire”). The fourth film in the “Underworld” franchise is just yet-another excuse to make money (the franchise has made almost $300 million worldwide) with mediocre CGI, horrible dialogue, and some truly horrendous storytelling. It’s not awful enough to be considered truly dreadful but it’s just shockingly asleep for a movie subtitled “Awakening.”

Rating: 1.5/5.0

Fourth films in hit franchises are often the bottom of the creative barrel – “The Final Destination,” “Fast & Furious,” and “Resident Evil: Afterlife” could compete with each other in Satan’s film festival for closing night festivities. To be fair, “Underworld: Awakening” isn’t as bad as any of those absolute stinkers. It’s bad, for sure, but there are some decent set pieces in the climax and the whole thing is over before it can get truly annoying (it runs about 80 minutes without credits…I swear the previews and commercials before ran just about as long).

Read Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Underworld: Awakening” in our reviews section.

The scariest thing about “Underworld: Awakening”? It took four people to write this thing (and two more are credited with character creation) – Len Wiseman (who directed the first two films in the series and must thank his agent every day for that assignment after he wakes up and looks at his wife Kate Beckinsale) & newcomer John Hlavin clearly did one draft, J. Michael Straczynski (“Ninja Assassin”) did another, and Allison Burnett (“Fame”) also took a credit. How much they did together is unclear. How many other people took their name off the project is also unclear. I sure wouldn’t want this on my resume.

“Underworld: Awakening” opens with a recap of the first and second films (the third movie was a prequel and truly horrendous) – Selene (Kate Beckinsale) was a vampire who can travel in the daytime and her eternal love Michael (Scott Speedman) was a lycan. The vampires and lycans had been in a war for centuries and the Romeo & Juliet story of the first “Underworld” turned up the heat on their battle. Selene & Michael killed the vampire elders and envisioned a world where their forbidden love could bloom. That didn’t happen. As Selene explains in narration, the human race discovered the vampire and werewolves and began a massive cleansing process that involved killing every bloodsucker and dude with a bit of a hair problem. Michael (an actor sort of pretending to be Speedman, who clearly had something better to do…like anything) is used as a trap to get the legendary Selene and the two are blown up in an underwater, 3D prologue.

Continue reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Underworld: Awakening” review.

Underworld: Awakening
Photo credit: Sony Pictures