The Director's Cut

They don’t care anymore. It’s quite obvious that they don’t. Maybe you’ve always known it, gnawing at the back of your mind. The terrible hamster of dark understanding. Loose. In your brain.

By ‘they’, I of course mean everyone. Anyone. The external forces. The powers that be. Specifically, people who make films. Narrow it down, and you’ll find that I mean the people – nay, the parasitic fragments of humanity – that made Underworld: Evolution.

Underworld Evolution: Possibly the worst film ever made.*

Underworld: Evolution Developmental Process

• Take a was-good-but-got-tired-quick genre – in this case, films styled after the Matrix trilogy.
• Using some power tools and an axe, remove the plot, being careful to ensure that you get all the nasty bits of originality that might try and cling to the sides. Leave only black leather, guns, pusedo science and physics defying martial arts.
• Replace all characters with supernatural creatures that firmly believe personality only happens to other people.
• Staple the leaky morass together with Kate Beckinsale in a leather cat suit. Ensure she is practically errupting from it in almost every scene. Fill cracks and plot holes with a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the need for a storyline.
• Profit.

Like a child attempting to catch tadpoles in a plastic shopping back, it starts out on a dubious premise. Everything of value quickly leaks out of the holes that are designed to prevent accidental - or even wilful – asphyxiation. All that is left at the end is a pile of mud and dead mutant fish inside a container that will take a thousand years to completely decompose. The testament of failure will outlive the memory of the idea in the first place. Such is this film.

You could watch it, but I recommend less painful pastimes such as gouging out your own eyes. Seriously, it’s too late for me, but I’d say it would be a preferable way to spend an evening. What you’re missing, more or less, is a typical starry-eyed werewolf/vampire action flick, made worst by Beckinsale’s accent, which is so British it practically hurts everytime she speaks. Which is a lot. Anyone who was unfortunate enough to watch the first Underworld and subsequently not empty the contents of their brain all over the garage wall will remember that the lead character, a male who oozes raw masculine sex like a harpooned seal, was bitten by both a werewolf and a vampire.

Since I can’t remember his name, being that unimportant to the general idea of a script, I’m going to call him Were-pire. Were-pire is still following Kate Beckinsale around like a lovelorn puppy, not fully comprehending what’s happening, which in a way sympathizes with the baffled audience. Kate reckons his double bad luck is actually a blessing, since somehow being venerable to sunlight, garlic, silver, crosses, mistletoe and stakes is balanced by the fact you have shared dietary considerations.

Something happens involving other vampires that kill each other and a big wolf trying to escape being imprisoned in a creepy castle. Were-pire has some existential angst moments, which appears to be his single purpose in the film other than appeasing goth chicks while their boyfriends dribble over Beckinsale. Some other vampires play at being soldiers and mess around with guns that shoot either expensive silver bullets or science defying ultraviolet bullets.

Ultraviolet.

Bullets.

I’m not a hundred percent, but I’m pretty sure the only way that is conceivably possible is if each bullet had a tiny lightbulb and battery inside it. It never explains it. It doesn’t need to.

I don't know either.

Kate gets into a massive fight during which she repeatedly clicks her two guns together like Dorothy’s slippers, and that somehow reloads them really fast and without anything actually going in. This is particularly useful, since Vampires torn apart by werewolves mere seconds earlier turn instantly into howling beastmen, violating traditional mythology by virtue of it being not real, I suppose. Meanwhile, there’s a big ass helicopter and a vampire that also has tentacles that is somehow connected to the Russian aristocracy, which is only strictly relevant for the purposes of medieval flashback filler scenes. He impales an old man with his shoulder mounted penis, mortally-wounding the last surviving immortal and proving conclusively that words like immortal are thrown about too casually.

No, god, I can’t do this anymore.

Just don’t see it. It’s awful.

Although not a particularly recent film, it is endemic of a new approach to making blockbuster movies.  It seems to consist largely of badly rehashed sequels and sitting back cackling on a pile of money. Unfortunately, I’ll keep watching them, and they’ll keep on not caring.

*Possibly the worst film. Unfortunately, I discounted great classics such as Starship Troopers II, and happened to watch the last half hour of Van Helsing, and five agonizing minutes of Barb Wire, after which I blacked-out.