Underworld (1/2 star)
review by Jon Waterman

Vampires vs. Werewolves: what more do you need to know?

Well, for starters, the Werewolves are called “Lycans.” That’s really easy to figure out. Also, you have to have a pre-existing knowledge of what kills both of these nearly immortal creatures. They don’t spell it out for the newbies. Also you should know to not go see it.

The movie has some decent cinematography. The shot composition and the lighting work well together. Nearly all of the action is descript and easy to follow. However, even though, the film looks good, it has some problems, too. The entire film is tinted blue. Not only is this an overly used convention, but it’s a bad choice. What would be so bad about letting some natural colors come in every once in a while. I’d openly welcome some variation on the tinting to acknowledge different locations. The lycans can have one color scheme and the vampires get another and the outside world gets a third. Makes perfect sense to me. Then when they all converge, it could get all crazy like with the palette and it may be pretty interesting. But no. Plain blue tint all the time.

The CG creatures look horrible. They fumble around the screen awkwardly and staggeringly. Are we supposed to be afraid of these incredibly fake werewolves? They weren’t the only fake things on screen, though. The actors just pulled me out of this movie completely. During the film, I found I wanted more action sequences. Anything to bring some interest back. Just as long as they don’t bog the fights down with the choppy animated creations.

Also, the story didn’t really matter or always make a whole lot of sense. They resurrect this lord vampire to get advice about the war. But then they make a big deal about it, because it wasn’t his turn to be woken up and he was woken too early. They never really say what will really happen as a result of this. They only say that it wasn’t his time yet. Why not save us all some time and wake the other dude up instead. Or better yet, keep this one and just say he was woken early to help them with the situation. Don’t put back story in if you can’t back the story up.

Lastly, the music was horrible. Instead of explaining plot, they would blast the music to sort of escape the questions characters ask. Also, the dramatic stinging musical cues were not laughable, but almost surely stolen from somewhere else.

The whole thing just screamed “B-Movie” to me. The horrible effects, the abysmal acting and the wretched music. But hey, they used a blue tint, so they must know what they’re doing, right?

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