Not Good At All

Rating: 1/10 (2 October 2003)

*Minor Spoilers - don't worry, you spot them coming a mile away*
Some of the fights were decent. The morphing thing on the werewolves was good. The costumes were interesting, if not a tad redundant, and the setting kept very gothic and fitting for most of the film.
That is where the virtues of this film end.
We have been waiting almost ten years for another decent vampire movie, and we keep getting cliched disappointment after another. Vampire culture barely factored into it. We hardly see them demonstrate any of their powers. This could very easily be about human werewolf-hunters, and the plot would need only a little tweaking. That aside, the plot was still quite bad. The avenging-murdered-family bit is getting very old and very tired and it's pulled off in uncreative enough a way not to give them the benefit of the doubt.
When Selene (Beckinsale) and Mike (Speedman) inevitably fall in love, you begin to wonder why, as nothing has really happened that merits any feelings for one another. Their first kiss comes from out of nowhere. I realize this is primarily an action movie but let's put SOMETHING behind the relationships.
That being said, the action sequences that were rewarding to watch were few and far between, and none of them involved Selene. Kate Beckinsale seems very out of place in a fight. And in the final battle, the death of the big bad guy is actually very comical, and the cinema I was in burst into laughter when he died, which I somehow doubt was the intent.

And finally, as a horror film, it doesn't even try to scare you. I can't see it being considered a horror film in any serious capacity.
And as a detail, why didn't we just call them "Werewolves" instead of "Lycans" which sounds exactly like "Lichens."