Too much action, not enough horror

Rating: 7/10 (10 December 2004)

I suppose it's my own fault that I had such great expectations from this movie, I had hoped for a standard horror thriller, with innocent human victims preyed upon and devoured by vampires and werewolves in the course of the conflict. And indeed, that is how Underworld started out, but quickly this movie transformed itself into a routine, and not particularly exciting action flick. In my opinion, in horror movies the supernatural antagonists have to inflict their savagery on relatively defenseless victims, victims who ultimately conquer and kill these predators by some clever and unexpected ruse.
In this movie, first of all, both vampires and werewolves are equally unsympathetic to humans since both use their formidable powers to prey upon their unaware,unsuspecting and usually defenseless victims. Secondly, both of these groups of supernatural creatures were equally powerful, having achieved what could be called a balance of power in terms of their pretty standard weaponry. Thirdly, and finally, both sides got so tied up with their fantastic martial arts, their pistols, machine guns, and magic bullets, and even their car chases, that I soon forgot that they were supposed to be supernatural creatures of the night at all and they simply turned into Matrix wannabes.
I felt that the sets were suitably eerie, the costumes beautiful, the acting better than average, and the plot of the film, when it was finally made clear at the denouement, quite acceptable. In fact, I feel that had the script been tweaked just a little, making one side somewhat more unfairly devious and even a little more powerful, that as a viewer I might have enjoyed an effective horror film, rather than a run of the mill action thriller, with vampires and werewolves in place of van Damme or Stallone.
I can still recall, and relish, the rather ancient horror thriller of Frankenstein meets the Wolfman as managing to effectively coordinate fear, horror, and a pretty good fight scene without sacrificing the basic intent of the film.