Though you'd think the prolonged success of the leather duster and knee-high gothic boot industries would be evidence enough, it's taken three Underworld flicks for humans to realize that werewolves and vampires exist. In Underworld: Awakening, man sets out to cleanse earth of both undead clans, and the 3D results are really violent and really stupid.
Icy "Death Dealer" Selene (Kate Beckinsale), long ostracized by her blood-guzzling ilk for falling for a half-vamp/half-lycan dreamboat (Scott Speedman previously; he's not in this one), begins by escaping a laboratory where she's been hanging in a large refrigerated tube for more than a decade. Piecing together the "purge" that occurred during her time in suspended animation, she befriends David (Theo James), high-cheekboned scion of an underground vampire resistance, to combat a rising CGI werewolf threat and the sinister advances of Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea), primary shot-caller of the sheisty corporation that imprisoned her.
With each set piece cloaked in a depressing array of grays and blues and the wistful Detective Sebastian (the suddenly ubiquitous Michael Ealy) moping around, there's an empty feel to the proceedings, a cold discomfort no amount of decapitations or exploding torsos can assuage. (There are some awesome deaths though.) And corny as it may have been, the star-crossed romance of past Underworld chapters at least gave Beckinsale a chance to vampirically emote. Here she mainly looks exasperated.
