Poor decisions sink what could have been the first good Underworld movie

Rating: 5/10 (16 June 2020)

Underworld: Awakening starts off so promising. I like the concept of humans finally discovering that these mythical monsters exist in their world, and it makes sense that their reaction is fear and violence. Making humanity the bad guys is intriguing, and at least with humans I could relax in knowing what their weaknesses are, so they don't take thousands of gunshots and survive only to be killed by a single knife to the chest. Likewise, it would be fascinating to see how the vampires and werewolves would have to band together in order to form an underground resistance to preserve their kind. Yet they completely skip over the entire war with humans. That's right, this movie makes the moronic decision to jump ahead 12 years to the point that there are only a handful of the undead creatures still in existence. While this might increase the importance of Selene since she's part of an endangered species, it also skipped over some of the most interesting dramatic things they could have done with this franchise.
This might be a minor spoiler for Underworld: Awakening, but they also don't really show a war with humans when we get to the future. Instead, it just boils down to the same mindless fights between vampire and lycan. I continue to find these battles boring because it is unclear why at one moment you can easily rip a skull in half, and then later you struggle to even stay alive against the same creatures. Also, the effects are just a joke at this point. The lycans look like old Ray Harryhausen stop motion creatures when they don't just look like 2-dimensional cartoons. I can't take anything seriously when I'm watching goofy monsters that look that bad. There are a few story elements that work in this chapter of the saga. I thought the bond between family members was interesting, and I will always enjoy Michael Ealy in anything. I keep wanting them to figure out the Underworld franchise and make something decent, but they continue to make films that are average at best.