Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Kate Beckinsale looks fantastic in leather. She could be reading tax law in a PVC catsuit, and at least half the audience would still show up. Unfortunately for everyone else, Underworld decides that if you’ve got Beckinsale in skin-tight gear, you don’t actually need a coherent story, pacing, or characters. Just throw in blue lighting, some Matrix hand-me-down trench coats, and werewolves with all the menace of a pack of wet Labradors, and call it cinema.
Vampires vs. Werewolves: The HR Department Version
The central conceit is “vampires and werewolves at war for centuries.” Sounds cool, right? Gothic violence, primal hatred, forbidden romance? Nope. Instead, the movie presents it as a corporate power struggle. These bloodsuckers aren’t feral monsters—they’re bored aristocrats in board meetings, arguing over coven succession like they’re splitting up grandma’s estate.
The Lycans, meanwhile, look less like terrifying predators and more like animatronic mascots from a Chuck E. Cheese that went feral. Their leader Lucian (Michael Sheen, bless him, giving Shakespearean effort in a SyFy Original script) spends most of his screen time monologuing about slavery and forbidden love. He’s less “terrifying werewolf” and more “guy who corners you at a bar to talk about his screenplay.”
Selene: Hot, Deadly, and Terminally Bored
Kate Beckinsale’s Selene is supposed to be the ultimate vampire assassin, a “Death Dealer.” She struts around in leather, dual-wielding pistols, and glaring like she’s perpetually stuck in a traffic jam. The problem? Her personality is so flat she makes Keanu Reeves look like Jim Carrey.
Selene’s big dilemma is whether to kill or save Michael, a human who just got turned into the world’s most reluctant werewolf. The movie tries to sell this as Romeo and Juliet with fangs, but Beckinsale and Scott Speedman have the romantic chemistry of two coworkers forced to carpool. Watching them share longing glances feels less like forbidden passion and more like an HR complaint waiting to happen.
Michael: The Human Lab Experiment
Scott Speedman plays Michael Corvin, a medical student who finds himself in the middle of the vampire-werewolf war because of his “special bloodline.” In theory, he’s the Chosen One, the key to creating a vampire-werewolf hybrid. In practice, he spends most of the film looking confused, sweaty, and chained to furniture.
He’s the guy who goes camping once, gets bitten by a mosquito, and spends the next week Googling “early signs of malaria.” By the time he becomes the much-hyped hybrid, the result is less nightmare beast and more CGI Play-Doh golem with abs.
Viktor: Grumpy Vampire Dad
Bill Nighy is wheeled in as Viktor, an elder vampire awakened from his beauty sleep to scold Selene for waking him up too early. Imagine Dracula, but retired and grumpily yelling at kids to get off his lawn. He spends most of the film monologuing about ancient betrayals before finally getting decapitated in what should be a triumphant climax but instead feels like someone finally unplugged Grandpa from his recliner.
The Plot: Death by PowerPoint
If you strip away the gunfights and CGI fur, the plot of Underworld is essentially corporate espionage with occasional fangs. There are betrayals, secret bloodlines, and revelations about parentage, but none of it lands with any emotional weight.
The film spends so much time explaining its convoluted lore that it forgets to scare, excite, or entertain. It’s like sitting through a vampire HOA meeting where everyone’s fighting over who gets to manage the coven’s light bill.
Action Scenes: Bullet Time on Life Support
Director Len Wiseman clearly binged The Matrix before filming, because the action is wall-to-wall leather, trench coats, and slow-motion bullets. The problem is, unlike The Matrix, the choreography here looks like everyone’s moving underwater. There are long stretches where Beckinsale just stands around emptying clips into walls for no apparent reason. At one point, she shoots a perfect circle in the floor to fall through it—a stunt that feels less like badassery and more like a Looney Tunes gag.
The werewolf transformations, meanwhile, are pure early-2000s CGI: rubbery, pixelated, and about as scary as an Animorphs book cover.
The Love Story That Nobody Asked For
The film really wants us to care about Selene and Michael’s romance, but it’s like watching two mannequins fall in love at a department store closing sale. Selene saves him, chains him up, bites him, yells at him, saves him again—rinse and repeat. Their “connection” is basically:
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Michael: What’s happening to me?
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Selene: You’re special.
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Michael: Okay, cool.
It’s less “star-crossed lovers” and more “we accidentally sat next to each other on a long-haul flight.”
Style Over Substance (Emphasis on Over)
To its credit, Underworld nails the goth-club aesthetic. The whole movie is bathed in blue lighting, like the director bought a lifetime supply of tinted bulbs at a discount warehouse. Every scene looks like it was shot in a meat locker. The costumes are all latex, leather, and eyeliner, like Hot Topic vomited on the cast.
But once you strip away the visuals, you realize you’re left with a two-hour perfume commercial where occasionally someone turns into a werewolf.
Dark Humor Highlights
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Kate Beckinsale’s wardrobe: The latex bodysuit is so tight it’s a miracle she doesn’t squeak when she walks.
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Kraven (Shane Brolly): The vampire second-in-command who’s so slimy he feels less like a character and more like the physical embodiment of Axe Body Spray.
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The hybrids: Marketed as unstoppable super-beings, but they look like rejected villains from a PlayStation 2 cutscene.
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The dialogue: Gems like “You are safe now… if you come with me” delivered with all the passion of someone ordering takeout.
Why It Fails
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It takes itself way too seriously. For a movie about vampires fighting werewolves, there’s not a single wink or moment of fun.
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The romance is dead on arrival. Even necrophilia would have more spark.
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The pacing drags. The first hour is just people glaring, whispering about betrayals, and occasionally firing guns into the dark.
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The CGI hasn’t aged well. These werewolves look like Play-Doh sculptures caught in a wind tunnel.
Final Thoughts
Underworld is proof that even the sexiest leather catsuit can’t carry a movie drowning in its own self-importance. Kate Beckinsale is magnetic, and she single-handedly keeps the film watchable, but everything around her is a slog: dull action, uninspired romance, and enough vampire lore exposition to fill a textbook.
If you want gothic style without substance, it’s serviceable. If you want entertainment, you’d be better off people-watching at a goth club—it’ll be shorter, cheaper, and the werewolves will look about the same.
