Underworld: Awakening

The Underworld series hits a palpable low with this absolutely interminable entry, which follows Kate Beckinsale’s Selene as she attempts to protect a mysterious young girl (India Eisley’s Eve) from various evildoers (including, of course, nefarious lycans). Filmmakers Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein kick Underworld: Awakening off with a blisteringly-paced stretch that admittedly holds some promise, as the relentless narrative does, at the outset, disguise the complete and utter emptiness of the storyline – with the semi-watchable vibe heightened by Beckinsale’s expectedly solid work as the less-than-captivating protagonist. It’s only as the film segues into its increasingly tedious midsection that one’s interest begins to flag, as scripters Len Wiseman, John Hlavin, J. Michael Straczynski, and Allison Burnett, generally speaking, eschew the mythology that has come to define these movies in favor of over-the-top set pieces – with this decision resulting in a pervasive lack of context that renders each successive action scene more underwhelming and dull than the last. (It certainly doesn’t help, either, that Mårlind and Stein prove utterly unable to infuse any of the movie’s high-octane interludes with anything even resembling excitement, as such moments have been suffused with an incoherent, needlessly frenetic sensibility that’s nothing short of disastrous.) By the time the predictably lifeless climax rolls around, Underworld: Awakening has unquestionably established itself as a bottom-of-the-barrel endeavor that’s been designed to appeal solely to pre-pubescent boys – with the film’s pervasively slick and mindless atmosphere growing more and more wearying as time progresses.

* out of ****