Underworld

Saw Underworld yesterday. While I won’t go quite as far as to call it a Big. Steaming. Noxious. Pile. of. shite., I will say that I found it very disappointing and frustrating. There was a lot of promise and potential in the film, which unfortunately was entirely wasted. I’d almost prefer that a film be flat-out bad, but when you can see the seeds of a worthwhile effort in the midst of the crap, it makes it just that much harder to deal with.

First off, the good points (and yes, there are some).

The film is extremely pretty. Lots of worthwhile eye candy — cast, sets, costumes — just about everywhere, there’s something worth looking at.

The writers have concocted a new mythology for the creation of both vampires and werewolves, and included an explanation for the enmity between the two species, that I really liked. I’d have to see the movie again (rent, though, not in the theater) to get it down completely, but it involved a disease that one person had an immunity to which was passed to his children. Those two children were bitten by animals — one by a bat, one by a wolf — and the mutation that allowed their father to survive the disease mixed with the animal’s blood to create the beasties. After years of the werewolves acting as the vampire’s daylight guardians, a conflict between the two set off the years of warring between the clans. It’s a definite step away from the traditional storylines, and I liked the new ideas.

Unfortunately…

The writing, the overall story, and the direction were horrid. So much could have been done with the story to make it coherent, and it never happened. Alliances are formed that don’t make any sense, motiviation is never given for much of what happens, and too much of the plot dissolves into an incoherent mess.

The actors are something of an on-again, off-again mix. Kate Beckinsale does decently with what she has, she just wasn’t really given that much to do — her character is essentially either brooding or fighting during the entire movie. Bill Nighy as Viktor, the recently-resurrected elder of the vampire clan did fine by me up until the end, when a suddenly bleated out, “But I loved my daughter!” line completely destroyed all credibility for the character in my eyes. Sure, it was bad writing, but he played the line so badly that it just made it that much worse. Shane Brolly as Kraven, leader of the vampire clan until Viktor’s appearance was fairly ridiculous, to tell the truth. In fact, the only actor — and character — that I really though much of was Lucien, leader of the werewolves, played by Michael Sheen. Not only did he get the only character in the film given any decent amount of personal backstory and motivation, but he was the only actor to really seem like he fit his part.

Special effects wise, the movie was decent for the most part, with a few sudden moments where it got so astoundingly bad that it surprised me (Celine’s sword-slash-and-floating-jump across the pool of water at the end [which can also be seen in the trailer — it’s the sequence that looks like it could be straight out of a video game] stands out in my mind). The soundtrack, both musically and just as effects, drove me nuts. Apparently the sound designers felt that the best way to make sure that something was interesting and intense was to make it loud, and then they decided that everything in the movie counted as interesting and intense.

So that’s Underworld — some definite promise and potential that was completely pissed away during its two hours on screen. A shame, really — in my minds eye, I can see the same elements creating a film that would have been well worth watching, but it just didn’t happen here.