Review: Underworld Evolution

Josh and I went and saw “Underworld: Evolution” yesterday, the sequel to the aptly titled “Underworld.” Basically, Kate Beckensale plays a vampire who is caught up in various levels of intrigue concerning a war between the vampires and Lycans (werewolves…) for many centuries. If anything, she proves that she can not only act in silly romantic comedies, but also in action movies wearing tight leather jumpsuits.

Overall, the movie wasn’t terrible, but I can understand where many critics find faults. Primarily, the story was relatively difficult to follow. There were lots of characters mentioned and referred to, and the movie picked up right where the previous one left off…so if you haven’t seen the original in awhile, it’d be good to see it again before watching this. They do a good job of using flashbacks, etc. to show you what happened in the earlier one, but there’s still enough left out that I was confused for much of the movie.

The effects themselves were pretty good, but could have been better. I mean, with a budget of only $48 million, they did a good job stretching the money as far as possible. Some of the man-to-werewolf conversion scenes were still kinda hokey, but no more so than in the first one. The acting was pretty good…but the action scenes could have been a bit better. I mean, when they happened, they were good…but there weren’t that many spread throughout the movie. Really, the last 20 min of the flick is where all the action was…and it was well-done…but more would have been welcome. I guess you can only have so many werewolves in your movie for $48 million… 😛

Anyway, not a terrible movie…not my favorite by any means, but if you liked the first one, you’d probably like this one…maybe even more so…