Underworld: Awakening is the fourth installment of the "other" supernatural Vampire/Werewolf saga; you know, the one that has nothing to do at all with doe-eyed vampire/werewolf/human love triangles or legions of screaming teenage girls (and their moms) who align themselves into so-called 'teams' named after their favorite monster-hunk. Oh no, the darkly violent setting of 'Underworld' is populated by real monsters, with the exception of its recurring heroine, Selene, who belongs to a dying order of vampire knights called 'Death Dealers' who hunt and kill their arch enemies the Werewolves (called Lycans) in their eternal conflict whose origin was explored in the previous (3rd) installment.
Underworld: Awakening actually picks up where the second movie, Underworld: Evolution, left off in the 'present day.' The existence of vampires and lycans have been discovered by humans, who promptly carried out a 'successful' genocidal campaign to rid the world of these classic movie monsters. Only few vampires survived and all lycans were believed to be extinct. Our heroine Selene wakes up from cryogenic suspended animation 12 years after the campaign in a lab called Antigen and teams up with a human detective and a clan of surviving vampires to combat a lycan conspiracy attempting to genetically replicate a race of ΓΌber-lycans, the very same vampire/lycan hybrid that was the subject of the original movie 10 years ago. Confused? Watch the movies in order then.
There's an unbending 'golden rule' in Hollywood that, when a movie title exceeds three installments (that is, a trilogy) it caters to shameless opportunism and becomes something that's detestable for its lack of originality and imagination. While that may be the case with some titles, notably the three 'slasher' franchises "Halloween," "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street," all of which went beyond double-digit installments, "Underworld" still has something fresh to offer. Its is a rich universe (or 'underworld' if you prefer) full of possibilities and new stories yet to be told, and I just love the bleak, dystopian, monochromatic Gotham-like cityscape surrounding its characters. The 'Underworld' saga broke the golden '3-movie' rule not because of greedy opportunism, but because there is a large enough cult following to justify its continued existence.
7 out of 10
Go ahead, tell me my movie "sucks."
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