This may be what hell is like. Being in the audience, that is.

Rating: Null/10 (20 September 2003)

Let me get the quick part over with. Kate Beckinsale is attractive and fights against the tide to give her "character" some depth. But even Kate, surrounded as she is by some of the worst acting since Tim Burton's misbegotten Planet of the Apes, and some of the lamest dialogue since Terminator 3, can't keep from drowning in this swampy, dark, and silly mess. It really is that bad. I took my thirteen year old, a sophisticated fan of gothic horror and anime in his own right, and he wanted to scream at all the plagiaristic mangling that goes on this movie. That's right--they steal from many sources, from the Matrix dress code to the bullet spewing bits from X2 to a head-splitting straight from one of my son's favorite Japanese vampire stories. They steal and then the destroy. Nothing that's borrowed is used to good effect.
Believe or not, that was the good part. Now onto the remaining 99% of the movie. (Oh, and by the way, the fact that Underworld topped the box office its first weekend is--hopefully--a testament to the nicely edited trailer. I can only hope that it plunges into the underworld itself after people start hearing just how bad it is. One can hope, right?)
The worst part of the movie is the "acting," although it's hard to dignify it to that degree. One character, Kraven (ain't that original?), is so awful, so bad, such a putrescent poser, that he single-handedly ruins any chance of the movie pulling you into it's own, dark little world. He is a laugh-out-loud bad actor, and it is a real commentary on the director that he didn't fire the guy after the first day on the set. That is, he's bad if Kraven wasn't meant to be a dumb, goofy, air-headed male model type. But maybe that's what they were striving for. Kate Beckinsale is okay in her role. She's pretty and has a nice screen presence. But, as I noted up, that isn't enough. Everyone else is mediocre. Even the "look" of all these extras (they look like goth accountants and hair dressers) is just plain silly. The Matrix trenchcoats are a riot.
The script is an awful mishmash which spins an entirely silly and ornate (not in a good way) tale of battle between vampires and "lycans" (oh my, isn't that a cute nickname for lycanthropes!). Throw in a scientist who looks like an escapee from the Boys from Brazil, sets that look like a seventeen year-old interior designers idea of a library (with old, musty books arranged just so) and castle, a blaring and derivative soundtrack (with sampled "sounds" that go back to the mid-eighties and blaring intercuts designed to instill shock where the story can't), and this dark, dank atmosphere that is reminsicent of that hideous dragon movie that came out last year (god, I can't bring myself to recall the name). This movie is crap from one end to another.
So, avoid it, tell others how bad it is, and hope for better. Maybe Mel Brooks will take a shot at spoofing this dark barrel of detritus.