Underworld Awakening

directed by Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein (2012)

About the only thing I really was engaged by in this movie was picking out the Vancouver backdrops.  The evil lab?  That's SFU.

If only the rest of the movie was near as interesting as puzzling out where it could have been shot.  I didn't give a fuck about anyone in this.  The lead vampire? hunter?  I haven't seen the preceding 3 flicks, so I didn't know what was all led up to this one.  They explained the back story in the beginning, something about vampires battling werewolves until one guy became both, a hybrid vamp-lycan, and the lady vampire (Kate Beckinsale), who kills werewolves, fell in love with him and started killing bad traitorous vampires instead of just sticking it to the wolfman.  blah blah blah.  It still didn't make a whole lotta sense.  All I got was that somewhere in there was supposed justification for her to hunt down a bunch of folk she needs to kill: wolf people, regular people, vampire people.  She kills 'em all.  And really grossly, explicitly too.  Like hardcore head shots and dropping people out of windows after they've begged for their lives too.  NO MERCY! I know I'm supposed to be rooting for her badassery, but I didn't like her and if she'd died I wouldn't have cared.  I would have felt good actually, like yeah you deserved that you mercenary bitch.  What makes you think you have the right to kill all these folk?  They are trying to kill you? An eye for an eye?  More like pop allll their eyeballs for trying to pop yours.

That's what's really fucked about this movie.  It's stupid to kill people. Whatever, this is magic silliness. right? There are no vampires, or werewolves, but there are video games and it's fun killing mindless others in video games, smashing sprites to oblivion, but does this inhumanity towards humanesque monstrosities translate into a lack of respect for humanity generally?  Intuitively, I'd say yes.  Yeah killing is the prime directive in many video games and action movies, and sure you aren't seeing "real" people being brutalized and murdered.  But you are seeing violence and you're supposed to be enjoying it, and isn't there something fucked up about that?  Why am I supposed to think it's okay for one class of people to be destroyed?  Why do you want me to root for their complete annihilation?  Why does feeding bloodthirsty instincts feel so dirty and backward?  I dunno that these questions are reasonable to ask of a cash grab action horror smackdown, but so what, they are still good questions.  Bottom line is I felt bored and often disgusted by the excess of violence and pandering to baser instincts that ran rampant all throughout this flick.