“The world I once knew has changed. Vampires and Lycans are now the hunted.”

Justin’s rating: If they had thrown leprechauns in as a third faction, this would’ve been a global blockbuster

Justin’s review: I find it a little nuts that for almost two decades, we were getting a new Underworld movie every three or four years — and I hadn’t noticed after the first one. Sometimes series keep on trucking without your permission or attention, y’know?

So now we are cruising into the fourth entry into this action-horror series, returning to the story of Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and Michael (Scott Speedman). Oh wait, Speedman didn’t return, so we’ve got to tuck his character out of the way and get back to everybody’s favorite PVC-clad vampire assassin.

For some reason, it’s taken all the way until the events of this movie — hundreds of years after the formation of the werewolf and vampire clans — for humanity to notice that they exist. This does not develop gradually over the course of Underworld: Awakening; it’s awkwardly shoved into the opening credits, as humanity wages war on the non-humans. No doubt this widespread conflict would’ve been prohibitively expensive to film, hence the glimpses before Selene is shoved into cryogenic sleep and sent forward 12 years.

Admittedly, this global “purge” is probably the most interesting and focused way to begin one of these movies and answers the question I’ve had since the 2003 original about why these incredibly not-covert vampires and werewolves haven’t been noticed despite shooting and blowing up all sorts of public places.

Of course, this reframing of the series puts us human viewers in the awkward situation of being asked to root against ourselves without any good reason given. I mean, what’s so noble and good about these murder machines that we should want them to win? I’m on Team Human unless convinced otherwise.

Anyway, now we’re in a confusing future where Michael is AFK, scientists have been studying Selene, and the remaining vampires and werewolves have gone into hiding. As Selene escapes, she ends up the guardian of a young girl named Eve (India Eisley) who — no big surprises here — is actually her and Michael’s daughter.

While the Underworld films have trafficked in plenty of bloody bits, Awakening really ups the gore almost from the get-go. Selene, now accessorizing with a long coat, lives up to her status as a Death Dealer with an expanded field of targets.

I really would’ve loved more scope of this radically changed world. It was honestly the first time that I was interested in the larger goings-on in any of these movies. But no, it’s Selene chasing and being chased, killing and failing to be killed, while memories of The Matrix live on 13 years after being fresh and new.

What this movie, what any of them, truly needed wasn’t just a hyper-competent killer at the center. We needed characters. Sympathetic, interesting, complex characters whose personalities are more than the outfits they wear. Selene and her trademark getup cornered the market on looks, but she’s nothing more than an ’80s action hero who kills and kills and quips once in a while. Actually, she’s a bit less than that, because she doesn’t have a sense of humor. If she was just a normal person, Selene would be that office worker you’d ignore because she’d always be scowling and stand-offish.

Comparing these movies to their closest contemporaries, the Resident Evil series, magnifies how much more hollow they are. And nobody’s arguing that Resident Evil was tromping about in deep narrative waters. I was surprised to learn that J. Michael Straczynski had a hand in this story, considering how highly people think of him for Babylon 5’s complex structure. Maybe he wrote the part where the werewolf jumped on that guy. And that other guy.

Underworld: Awakening is forgettable genre fluff, made for the guilty pleasure viewers who have no good defense for the viewing yet derive some fun from it. If that’s you, then fine, I won’t judge. But it’s not getting any better for me this far into the series, even with a time jump and some scifi stirring the pot.

Intermission!

• TWO MOVIES AGO ON UNDERWORLD…
• If someone is whipping a flamethrower around in an alley, just run on the side of a building. It’s easy as that.
• Wait, how were they captured? Someone shot an ice bomb into a harbor? How does that work at all?
• Why were they storing Selene upside-down?
• Good thing she had some Modesty Fog there
• And they kept her uniform?
• You stab Selene, she’s going to break your arm in the worst possible way
• Taking out seven guards with a super-fast dash is a slick move
• Vampire skulls are impervious to small arms fire?
• “Real Lycan teeth” and “Real vampire teeth” in the store
• The glass cracking behind the guy as he’s being held there
• You can easily talk when someone is holding you by the throat
• Eve ripping the werewolf in two while screaming
• Do werewolves or vampires feel pain at all? None of them seem to be bothered by cuts, bullets, or gory neck biting.
• So much strobe lights and 3D effects
• Rifles in the chandelier seems impractical
• The inside of a body looks like a red bathtub
• Selene can give life now, apparently
• IT GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP, PEOPLE
• Surgery is always better with strobe lights in the operating room
• You might be surprised to learn that this made the highest box office of any Underworld movie to date