Review

Twelve years ago humanity discovered that Lycans and Vampires actually exist and immediately launched a pogrom to wipe out both species. Seeing the situation as hopeless Selene, a vampire Death Dealer, and Michael, her true love Vampire/Lycan hybrid, decide to flee the city they live in. Problem is the security forces are wise to their plan and capture the lovers.

In the present Selene awakes and finds she has ben cryogenically frozen for the past twelve years in the laboratories of Antigen, a company seeking an inoculation for the Vampire/Lycan plague that has all but been eradicated. Anyone else smelling something fishy. Selene not being happy with the situation escapes and discovers a few things have changed. Vampires exist in hidden Covens, she has a hybrid daughter, and the Lycans have devolved in the sewers. Her single purpose is to find Michael, still frozen over at Antigen. When a Vampire coven is attacked by supposedly eradicated high order Lycans, Selene discovers that not everything is as it seems. Especially worrying for the Death Dealer is a new master strain of Lycan that is larger, far more aggressive, not troubled by silver, and able to heal from wounds as quickly as a Vampire! Much carnage ensures as Selene gets her warrior on and goes after her daughter, captured by the Lycans who attacked the Coven.

And welcome to the first review of a 2012 movie. I'm almost always excited by the first movie of the new year to hit our review schedule and was happy enough to tramp down the local Hoyts movie emporium with a full crew to catch up with the Underworld franchise, especially since the new movie promised the return of Kate Beckinsale in her definitive dark genre role. Did the movie live up to my happy place expectations, or were the yank Critics right in their attacks?

Let's get a couple of the criticisms aimed at this movie out of the way first, the Underworld franchise manages to gather detractors like flies to decomposing flesh for no other reason in my mind than this was a Brit centric franchise originally. Some people have attacked the movie for seemingly losing the underlying mythology, sorry did you see an entirely different movie to the one I saw? In my version the war between Lycans and Vampires has been raging for centuries, just like in the previous movies, and the love interest between a Vampire and a non-Vampire is central to the conflict, just like in the previous movies. Sorry the entire focus of Awakening is both of those themes, just like in the preceding movies. The second point of conjecture is that Awakening copies the gun totting wire-fu of the Resident Evil franchise. Considering the first Underworld movie contained Kate in gun totting wire-fu mode, and was made prior to the Resident Evil franchise giving us Alice it's a pretty stupid point made by people seeking to find fault, any fault, in order to attack yet another Underworld movie. Quite possibly the issue here is male writers not being happy with a female lead that kicks major arse in Blade like fashion, frack off back to the more misogynist entries yo, we love us some Selene and Alice round these parts. I remember back to when Underworld: Evolution was released and a number of Critics and other idiots raging that the movie was too complex to follow, frack me, stick to Noddy books they are about your speed. Why some Reviewers have to follow the ramblings of certain Critics in sheep like fashion remains a mystery, guys those Critics simply aren't that good, make your own mind up about a movie and for Christo's sake present your own ideas not second rate notions dreamed up by morons.

Okay having alienated a sizeable chunk of our readership, hey we're all about the love over here, let's move onto some thoughts on the actual movie itself.

Selene is back and I for one am happier than a Voorhees family member with a summer camp about to re-open in my neighbourhood

Awakening is certainly more kinetic and action filled than previous entries in the franchise. The movie only takes it's foot off the pedal in a couple of scenes, so if after more action than you can poke Sly at then dial in. We have Selene fighting humans, werewolves, super werewolves, and it doesn't let up from one adrenaline charged scene to the next. Directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein have their chorography on and I certainly wasn't noticing any blue screen or an overabundance of poorly rendered CGI. The plot has been pared down, and I was rocking with the action that hit warped factor from about frame three to the final frame. In fact one of the criticisms you could make is that the action gets hot and heavy almost immediately before the Audience picks up on where we are at, though Selene does summarise for our benefit in the initial talk over.

Helping out the action was some very solid use of 3D. Rather than simply poking things at the screen for the sake of pointing out the 3D rendition, the Directors confined themselves to adding a lot of depth to the movie frames, giving the feeling you are looking into the movie rather than having the movie leaping out at you unnecessarily. Which isn't to say things arem't flying out of the screen on occasion, I was ducking for cover at one stage as shards of glass seemed headed in my direction.

Plot wise, and this isn't a strong part of the movie, we're basically touching bases with Selene and seeing where things are at, clearly the movie is a bridging outing to the next instalment in the franchise. But what the heck you get plenty of bad arse action, which is the whole point of the movie in the first place. Don't go in expecting any doses of explaining the human condition or anything else that might elevate the Audience. The plot is more than adequate in getting us where we're going, so calling no foul really, not a lot of dark genre movies aim up at blowing you away with the script if we had to be honest.

If you are a fan of the franchise then you are going to enjoy Awakening, if you don't like Underworld then give the movie a miss rather than bitching about it all over the internet. Considering the movie is making some serious money, there clearly are a number of people excited by the whole thing. I had a good time with the movie, got exactly what I expected, thought Kate Beckinsale added a tad of emoting to her character, and have already decided to catch the fifth movie when it hit's screens. Forget the haters online, Underworld: Awakening is made for those of us that just wanted some cool action in our diet, consider this a strong recommendation.