Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

Genre: Action/Horror/Thriller

Running time: 93mins

Rating: 3/5

The Unborn, Confessions of a Shopaholic and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans made the short list this week. So clearly the only way to decide was to watch each movies respective trailer and allow my co-reviewer Daniel Thodey (who managed to only spend $2 at the cinemas…) to decide.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is a prequel to the previous two Underworld movies. It does answer questions, unanswered in the original 2003 blockbuster, while still being entertaining to those who have not seen either movie (cough Daniel). Underworld is your typical vampires verses lycans (werewolves) grudge match, really focusing on the beginning of the feud and how they came to be.

I have to admit I did miss Kate Beckinsale this time round: her ability to portray her vampire role continues to impress me every time I re-watch the Underworld movies. Her replacement Sonja (Rhona Mitra) who does look very similar to Beckinsale plays a strong passionate character. You could really feel her emotions during the film as she goes from love towards Lucian (Michael Sheen) and then hatred towards her father Viktor (Bill Nighy).

As with most vampire movies the scenes are very dark and gloomy, (no surprise there, as vampires shrivel up in sunlight…). In saying that, it did get rather repetitive after the first 30mins of dark scenes. You do get to see a brief period of sunlight, let’s just say it doesn’t end well. It is a well put together movie, which has encouraging effects to complement the story. The action scenes are vast with a reasonable amount of gore. Overall it wasn’t too bad, it could have been better but they managed to pull the prequel off.