Underworld: Evolution

It is a sure sign that a movie is going to be ponderous and badly written when it begins with not one, not two, but three expository sequences. Underworld: Evolution is both of these things in addition to being hyper violent, and not in that slightly exciting, violence-as-foreplay-in-post-AIDS-cinema either; indeed, it is needlessly violent on absolutely every level.

A sequel to the two-years gone Underworld, U:E ostensibly picks up where the first film left off, with vampire death dealer Selene (Kate Beckinsale) on the run with vampire/lycan hybrid Michael (Scott Speedman, who finds every excuse he can to get his shirt off because, as we all know werewolves should be shirtless) after Selene’s murder of the leader of her vampire coven. Ostensibly because unlike the first film which, by implication, was set in London, this movie seems to take place somewhere in Eastern Europe, yet still be within driving distance of the coven’s prototypical English country house base of operations. And this is but one of the movie’s continuity flaws.

Despite the pretitle-expository crawl which only works for 1940s style serials or those aiming to ape that genre, despite the pre-title sequence that gives us the backstory for the meat of the plot, and despite a harried montage under voiceover of the salient points of the first film immediately after the title, this film subjects the audience to one of the most extreme cases of sequel-itis I’ve ever seen. After being treated as dumb and gentled along by all this backstory, instead of being eased into the current situation, the audience is effectively thrown from a moving vehicle at a high speed and left to catch up, given both too much action and too much exposition at the same time.

The action scenes and sequences happen at high speed and with the aforementioned violence that is not only visual – much crashing of trucks and shooting of bullets that do absolutely no damage – but, in keeping with the first film, aural as well with sound effects amped up beyond all reasonable belief.

The needlessly violent designation is but one indicator of the cardinal sin that is, ultimately, this movie’s downfall: it pays no attention to its own mythos (or what soap opera writers call “the bible” for a show). In a series of sequences in which we are repeatedly shown that using bullets on Markus (Tony Curran), our mutant Romeo and Juliet’s main nemesis in this film, Selene later does exactly that, waste a lot of bullets on him to no great effect. After being repeatedly told and shown what killer marksmanship said death dealer has she is later unable to hit the broadside of a barn with an Uzi, or so it would seem after begin unable to take down any of the proto-lycans spawned by William (Markus’ twin brother and, we’re told, blood-father of the lycan race). This film also makes much of a the “blood memories” a vampire can get from a victim, yet when Selene strategically feeds from a very important character in this series’ mythology, she gets no memories or knowledge from him at all.

For all of these things, and for the least erotic physically impossible love scene in a pedestrian position I’ve ever seen I am forced to generate a new rating category: nothing but the kernels. This doesn’t even rate one popcorn.

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