Time to put a stake in it

Rating: 4/10 (23 January 2012)

So, 6 years after the last time Kate Beckinsale donned a leather corset to play vampire warrior Selene and after making a 3rd edition of the franchise without her, the folks behind Underworld come back with a 4th go round which really does nothing more than prove they probably should have left well enough alone after the 2nd movie. With four people credited for the screenplay, it's not exactly a surprise to find Awakening is the worst written film of the lot and the addition of 3D can't disguise the fact that there's nothing visually new or interesting here. If you're a big fan of these films, you might just barely find this one to be passable. If you enjoyed the original, which was a good and solid little fantasy action flick, but noticed the decline in quality of the sequels, you'll find the pattern continuing here.
As the motion picture begins, the existence of vampires and Lycans has been uncovered by humanity and the result has been all-out war against the "infected". You think that'd be kind of a big deal and take the story in some new direction, but it's nothing more than a plot device. Selene and her hybrid vamp/werewolf lover Michael (not Scott Speedman) get attacked and Selene wakes up from suspended animation 12 years later in a lab. She thinks Michael is the one who freed her but it turns out to be their hybrid daughter (India Eisley) and no, they never even make an attempt to explain where the daughter came from. With the help of a human cop (Michael Ealy) and a new vampire sidekick (Theo James), Selene has to save her daughter. Not from the humans but from a Lycan scheme to create new super-werewolves, which sort of gets back to the whole plot device nature of humans knowing about the denizens of Underworld. It's not a new beginning for the series or anything like that. It's just the hook they needed to get this production off the ground.
If you saw Beckinsale in the first two Underworld movies, there's nothing here that will surprise you. Frankly, part of this film get dangerously close to outright fan fiction, such as when Selene revives in the lab and finds her traditional leather outfit just waiting for her to put back on. I mean, what scientific purpose was served by keeping her clothes around for 12 years? Beckinsale looks damn good, shoots a bunch of stuff and there's plenty of CGI Lycans and slo-mo action scenes. If that's all you want, have at it.
If you're looking for a good story, even one only as good as the first or second parts of the franchise, don't bother. Underworld wasn't exactly Shakespeare but by fantasy action standards, it was a reasonably intelligent and well put together tale. The sequel was a bit too wrapped up in its own mythos, but was still functional. The third movie was strictly by-the-numbers, though it did flip the dynamic by making the Lycans more heroic than the vampires. However, Underworld: Awakening is a morally confused mess.
One of the reasons why the "vampire as hero" thing works is by being very circumspect about the whole "needing to feed on human blood" thing. By downplaying that, vampires change from menacing predators to really cool hipsters with super-powers. So, the original Underworld largely removed humans from the equation and focused on the werewolf vs. vampire conflict and put Selene in the role of heroine by defending the only major human character in the story. She then uncovered and rejected the villainy of her own bloodsucking kind, cementing Selene's moral and narrative virtue. Selene may have been a vampire but she never seemed to need to feed on humans and was mostly on our side. That dynamic continued in the 2nd flick and the third cast vamps as medieval tyrants facing a courageous Lycan rebellion where, again, humans were largely left out of the fight.
Underworld: Awakening opens with Selene slaughtering a score of human soldiers and then kills some more when she escapes from the lab, including chomping a guy on the neck and feasting on his blood. She's not a good guy who's trying to protect people from bad guys. She's an at best morally neutral creature who's only trying to survive and the viewer is expected to side with her out of nothing more than misanthropic contempt for your fellow human beings. This film assumes there's something wrong with normal people trying to protect themselves from supernatural monsters but never explains what that is. It also doesn't help that the plot is one of those multi-writer efforts where different bits from different versions of the script wind up jammed together on screen. There are too many characters and too many scenes that should have been cut out or significantly changed.
There are so few female-driven movie franchises that it's a shame to see this one swirl down the toilet bowl. Beckinsale and the first Underworld deserved the attention and success they got, but it's time to drag these movies out into the sunlight and let them burn up so we can all move on.