All sound and fury and not much else

Rating: 7/10 (24 March 2016)

Sometimes I think that Underworld would have made a better music video than a film. Evenescance could have wailed out a 90 minute goth number that could have just been laid in instead of audio, and it wouldn't hurt the film's narrative one bit. Indeed, you could just pop in your ear buds and and listen to whatever while you're watching it, and still pretty much know what's going on. This one is all visual flair and slick, posturing special effects that thunder along with little regard for logic, story or character development. That's not necessarily such a bad thing, as long as you know what you're going into and aren't expecting a dense, heady Bram Stoker outing. It concerns a nocturnal, bullet ridden war between vampires and lycans, known to us as werewolves. Kate Beckinsale is Selene, a front runner for the vamps, slashing and shooting her way through various stunts, shootouts and combat scenes in a swanky leather outfit. At a crucial time during the war, she falls in love with an injured lycan (Scott Speedman) and feels conflicted. As far as plot goes that's pretty much all she wrote. You're left to absorb a deafening opera of supernatural action that doesn't let up until the end. The characters tirelessly fight for a full fifteen minutes at the beginning of the movie before a single line of dialogue is even uttered. In a movie so heavily populated by sound, fury and style and so bereft of any actual weight, you better make damn sure the visual and stylistic elements deliver so you have something to keep people in their seats
This one makes good work of that category, it's visual aesthetic a dark Poe-esque palette, the creatures and violence memorably crafted. The vampires are sullen, nihilistic brooders who sit around in cathedral esque night clubs drinking blood from flute glasses. The werewolves are virile, primal beasts, all sinew, scruff and set - demolishing physicality. It's cool stuff, if you don't examine the 'plot' too carefully and just sit back for the dreary, frenetic, super charged ride that sometimes doesn't even know itself where it's going. But it sure knows how to get there.