A big letdown from the original three with one serious plot hole

Rating: 4/10 (30 May 2012)

I'm a fan of the original three Underworld movies, having bought all three on DVD, which I have watched several times each. After initially watching the third one, which I particularly liked, the first thought that occurred to me was, "I hope they make a fourth one". When I heard the announcement that # 4 was in the works, I was excited.
But to my disappointment, this movie was too much flash and too little substance. The fight scenes were moderately enjoyable but the storyline was just too thin. The 12-year gap, in particular, was a poor idea IMO. I, and I suspect other viewers of the original three movies, wanted to see what happened just after "Evolution". Also, unlike the first three movies, which developed an interesting back story and mythology about the two clans, this one was just one action scene after another, with too little character development and no substantive development of the mythology at all.
Having said all that, I still liked seeing Kate Beckinsale in action again. But my enjoyment was seriously dampened by one major plot hole, which makes it hard for me to re-watch this movie.
There are, of course, many plot holes, which have been discussed in other reviews. But the one plot hole that bothered me the most (and, surprisingly, I have been unable to find any discussion about it elsewhere), is the fact that, when Selene breaks free from Antigen at the beginning of the movie, all of the security guards (as well as the scientists she encounters) are human, even though, toward the end of the movie, nearly 100 percent of the staff appears to be Lycan. This illogical discrepancy was really hard to ignore.
I initially rationalized this discrepancy by the idea that Antigen, not wanting to reveal their "big secret" to the outside world, mostly used a human staff, particularly when dealing with any threat that could not be contained within the facility (where the risk that the general public could learn that the building was a Lycan haven would be a serious concern, particularly if dead Lycan bodies were found by the police, and/or observed by passersby). But that idea got thrown out the window by the fact that, when Selene openly attacks the facility near the end, virtually all of the guards-- including those outside the facility-- openly reveal themselves to be Lycans right away. And what happened to all of the human staff at the end? (The only human in the entire facility at the end appeared to be the one unfortunate woman scientist).
Maybe this shouldn't have bothered me so much, but it just seemed like nonsensical writing so that Selene wouldn't discover, at the outset, the "big plot twist" that Antigen was nothing more than a Lycan front, and intrusively makes the viewer realize how poorly thought out this story was, even though Len Wiseman is credited on the screenplay. Also makes it tough to re-watch without wondering, "why the hell is the entire staff human?" at the beginning.
If they end up doing a fifth one, I am hoping it will be more in the vein of the original three, with better, more thought-out writing and a stronger storyline.