No Sleep Walking for Selene

Rating: 8/10 (22 January 2012)

Good to see Beckingsale come back to this role. This film is well done. Though the year is never given as to when Selene wakes up, and because it was filmed in Eastern Europe, it's hard to tell if it's supposed to be present-day or not. But it really doesn't matter, considering Selene wakes up to find out that Lycans and Vampires were being extinguished by humans. There was some chatter about previous films with a battle between Beckinsale and Michael Sheen, who played Lucian, or who was going to direct this one. But the end result is that this is a good film, worth collecting.
Selene comes out of her chamber and the audience learns that she's been experimented on for the past twelve years. She is Specimen Two and she assumes Specimen One is her beloved Michael. Turns out there's a hybrid girl who broke out of her chamber and released Selene. The child is a product of Selene and Michael. So the lycans are after the girl, the vampires don't want her, nor Selene, and the police are hot on their trail.
So you can imagine the action. There is one time where Detective Sebastian (played by Michael Ealy of Barbershop and Seven Pounds - and yes, his eyes are really blue)asks Selene why is it that she can stay out in the sun? She answers that she "had help with that". Selene seems to be more powerful in this installment. She jumps a lot, she runs a lot and she shoots a lot. Her fight scenes are good, yet the new breed of lycans are quite animated as well. Then there's David (played by Theo James), a vampire who wants to side with Selene because she is a fighter. It seems that the lycans and the vampires have been run underground (separately), and still fighting one another. In comes Dr. Lane (played by Stephen Rhea of Priest), who is working with another doctor (played by Sandrine Holt, who has a history of action films, such as Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Starship Troopers, and TV series such as Once a Thief, Witchblade and Mutant X) who are trying to engineer a bigger, faster lycan.
Becksinsale actually gets a good workout in this film. And you realize that considering this is the fourth installment (three now with her), she has to up the ante on her abilities, especially when you have Resident Evil: Awakening coming out around the corner and we know that Milla Jovovich will deliver on her action.
The story leaves with a sense of another installment coming. Selene finds Michael for a moment, and then he disappears. So she has a new crew with her daughter, David, and Det. Sebastian who seem to head off to find Michael and to grow their coven. There were rumours that this may be Beckinsale's last installment. Let's hope not, because there's no one else who can play Selene and jump from roof tops like Beckinsale.