After 1 whole very very busy week at work, I had no chance of watching this latest (fifth) installment of the Underworld series on the premiere date on Wednesday. I had to wait until Sunday to be able to watch it. Last week, as I knew this movie was about to play, I felt that I had forgotten the background story, so I decided to watch again from the 1st till the 4th installments. And I did not regret it as it made me realize that I had only watched Underworld and its direct sequel Underworld: Evolution. Apparently I have not watched the 3rd installment which was also the prequel, i.e. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and also Underworld: Awakening which was the sequel of Underworld: Evolution as well as the 4th installment. This movie is the direct sequel of Underworld: Awakening. Hence I was able to understand the story without scratching my head to remember the sequences. Well, let's get on to the movie, shall we?
Brief Story Line
Movie started with the scene of our favorite Death Dealer from Vampire clan, Selene (Kate Beckinsale - Pearl Harbor, Serendipity etc) being hunted by a bunch of Lycans. As usual she was able to fend off those Lycans using her expertise and agility. She did however got a bit of help from David (Theo James - The Divergent series) her vampire ally. The Lycans were trying to capture Selene alive to get the information of her daughter's whereabout, who was a hybrid (a species with Vampire and Lycan blood). It was believed that the blood would make the Lycans more powerful and would be able to kill off all vampires.
Meanwhile, in one of the few remaining covens, Semira (Lara Pulver - Sherlock TV series) a power lust vampire who was in the council, asked the help from Thomas (Charles Dance - Pride Prejudice and Zombies, Game Of Thrones TV series etc) who was also the father of David to convince the councils for "recruiting" Selene to train the Death Dealer armies which were in need of her expertise and experience to be able to have chance in fighting the Lycans. These Death Dealers were under the lead of Varga (Bradley James - Merlin TV series) who was Semira's most trusted vampire.
After some convincing, the councils decided to proceed with asking Selene to come back and help the Death Dealers, despite their distrust of Selene due to her previous act of killing Victor, one of the oldest elder. Selene and David went back to the coven, after being informed by Vampire armies led by Alexia (Daisy Head - Fallen) about the councils' proposal. They managed to escape from the safe house, after a large Lycans army were able to track them and almost capture Selene and David. The Lycans were now under the lead of a very powerful strong werewolf named Marius (Tobias Menzies - Game Of Thrones and Outlander TV series) whose background was unknown.
The story later became complicated when Selene and David had no choice but to leave the coven and go to the north and seek Var Dor coven which was a sanctuary for vampires who have no other place to go and no families. This was where Selene and also David would learn something that would change their lives and fate forever. Now hunted by the Lycans and also the vampires, Selene and David had to fight for their lives and the lives of their vampires family.
End of Brief Story Line
It was very challenging to write the brief story line above without the knowledge of the previous Underworld series. Therefore, for people who wanted to see this movie, I really recommend them to watch those first before watching it, to avoid confusions of the plots in the movie. Unless of course if you are the type of person who do not care about the story line at all and could enjoy watching action movie without knowing the background story.
Anyway, the movie itself still used the same formula from the previous Underworld series where Selene had to fight for her life in order to save the Vampire clan, from the attack of Lycan clans. There were lots of fighting, with cool special effects and sound effects. I watched this movie in 3D, but I think they did not give a lot of impacts. I suspect it was not shot in 3D and only converted to 3D at a later stage. The fight coreography was done very superbly. I had no complaints at all on this. My most favorite fight scene was actually in the middle part where Selene had to fight Marius first time. It was absolutely fantastic and even "beautiful". It kind of remind me of fight scenes in a Final Fantasy games. However, the major war between the Lycans and the Vampires at the end of the movie were also great. Bottom line, as an action fight movie, this movie really did not disappoint.
As for the plots and stories, this time I actually felt that there were some surprising twists that were not there in the first 4 movies. In here, those twists were available quite frequently from the earlier part. But please do not mistake this as becoming a mystery thriller movie. Those twists were just giving us some different angles and feel about the movie.
A reminder also that being a movie about Vampires, the scenes would normally be shot mostly in the dark. So for those who could not enjoy watching movies which are mostly having dark nuance, then this movie is probably not for you. Oh another thing is the movie is definitely not for children as there were brutal bloody scene of the killings, not to mention few brief glimpses of adult sex scenes. Please do not expect this to be the most intelligent action movies of all time. This is a pure and simple action movie of war between vampires and werewolves. It is not a drama of love between these 2 clans/species like the Twilight saga (though all the problems and wars happening in the previous movies were due to the inter racial love between these 2 species).
So, in case you have not watched this movie til now and you want to watch it, I would recommend to watch the whole previous 4 installments, or at the very least, Underworld: Awakening. And better not watch the 3D version as I mentioned earlier, there were not too many scenes that have the great impact in 3D plus due to its dark scenes, it would make you a bit tired watching it wearing the 3D glasses. And remember, this is just another action movie and please do not expect it to be anything more than that.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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