Here’s a prequel that brings the trilogy full circle by depicting events leading up to UNDERWORLD and UNDERWORLD : EVOLUTION, closing with a clip of otherwise absent female lead Kate Beckinsale in iconic black PVC pose atop a rooftop. Those who were paying close attention to the previous two films (of which the second was significantly more exciting than the first) will appreciate how this pic’s plot and characters dovetail into those of its predecessors. Non-fans may be nonplussed by both, though it’s a zippy watch for the undemanding.
The main narrative of the UNDERWORLD movies is the on-going feud between the aristocratic vampire race and the Lycans whom they had once enslaved. This prequel unfolds in the Dark Ages and follows the Lycan rebellion spearheaded by charismatic revolutionary Michael Sheen, who bids to overthrow the Fascist regime overseen by vampire lord Bill Nighy. Sheen’s uprising is complicated by his love and lust for Nighy’s daughter Rhona Mitra.
Long-time genre FX specialist Patrick Tatopoluos – a creature creator and production designer on the previous UNDERWORLD films – gets a promotion to director of the third adventure. He duplicates the Goth look – all sexy blacks and moody blues – of Len Wiseman’s first two movies, and ensures that most scenes incorporate at least half a dozen contemporaneous extras who dress like they got a bulk discount at a Hollywood Instant-Goth superstore. He also casts a lead actress (DOOMSDAY’s Mitra) who looks similar enough to Beckinsale to conceivably pass for her in the posters if you look at them from a certain angle.
As well as maintaining the visual style of the first two UNDERWORLDs, RISE OF THE LYCANS also upholds their weaker elements. As before, there’s a sappy, sub-ROMEO AND JULIET doomed love story between characters from the warring clans. And as before, this leads to an unintentionally amusing, coy love scene that obscures any of the bare flesh you might want to see and has all the raw sexuality of a soft-focus shampoo advert. Like its predecessors, this movie’s script is sometimes clunky and corny, its po-faced belief in its own mythology often inviting unwanted mirth.
Nonetheless, the flick really comes to life in a series of large-scale, finely tuned action set pieces, which are generously sprinkled over a brisk 90 minute running time. All the budget is on screen, and there’s a hefty, consistent dose of head impaling / throat-ripping bloody violence of the kind that would have never made it into an R-rated studio horror movie twenty years ago. There may be an over-reliance on the kind of wham-bam, coherence-blurring cutting that’s typical of 21st century action sequences (some of the battles are edited to within an inch of their life), but for splatter fans, the film delivers. Some of the CG werewolf action borders on the cartoonish though the actual transformations are a long, long way from the embarrassing morphs on display in, say, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS and also superior to the unconvincing (and far more expensive) lycanthropic action of VAN HELSING.
The pretty, alluring Mitra has a lot less of interest to do than in DOOMSDAY, so it’s left to a couple of high-profile Brits in the cast to take the acting honors. Sheen – currently getting accolades for his half of FROST/NIXON – is typically committed and intense in a role that, for a time, helps turn this into THE PASSION OF THE LYCANS. Bare chested with long straggly hair and a beard crafted by Christ’s of Sunset Boulevard, he is bloodily flogged by Nighy’s henchman in the film’s nastiest moments. Nighy, meanwhile, has a lot of fun in a hammy pay check role continuing the fine British tradition of compelling eyebrow acting.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
