Underworld (2003, Movie) (unrated extended cut)

Format: Movie (Blu-Ray)
Director: Len Wiseman
Distributor: Screen Gems
Release Date: September 19, 2003
Runtime: 2 hours, 14 minutes

I often see the Underworld movies for sale on DVD or being aired on television. However, I have never actually sat down and watched any of the movies so today I figured I would give the series a try. This first film establishes that there is an ongoing war between vampires and Lycans (werewolves). The main character is a vampire woman named Selene. She figures out that the Lycans have been tracking a human named Michael for unknown reasons. Selene tries to figure it out while the head of the vampire clan, Viktor, tries to stop Selene for being involved as he doesn't believe in the whole conspiracy.

Even though this movie is technically classified as an action horror movie it is really just an action movie with a horror backdrop. It doesn't make much of an attempt at actually frightening the audience. So it is better to go into this movie thinking of it as an action movie that happens to be about vampires and werewolves. The action scenes are pretty well done. The movie is set in the present day so there's a lot of shootout scenes (bullets with UV light against the Lycans and silver bullets against the vampires).

The backstory in this movie is very detailed. Six-hundred years ago the Lycans kill civilians which the vampires don't approve of. One day the Lycans killed Selene's family so the head of the vampires (at the time) named Lucian rescued her and turned her into a vampire. Since then Lucian had died but the vampires had continued to fight and hunt down the Lycans. However, I don't know what it is but it feels really convoluted and hard to follow as it isn't conveyed very well to the audience on screen.

Unfortunately the character of Selene is not very fleshed out as this is the pretty much all the movie gives us about her the entire way through. I really wish that the characters in this movie were more fleshed out. The world has a lot of history to it but the characters have only the most minimal of development. Due to this I have limited investment in the characters which makes me care less about the action scenes.

The special effects in the movie are done very well. The makeup done on the vampires (particularly Lucian) looks excellent as well as the practical effects of the Lycans. The scenes where the Lycans do more action are CGI and while they haven't aged particularly well I will say that they look decent for 2003.

The unrated extended cut of the movie is a little misleading. It runs about twelve minutes longer from the theatrical cut and from what I can tell online it mostly adds story scenes. Even with these the plot is still hard to understand. Very little of the extra content is action/violence scenes so it being unrated is definitely just a marketing gimmick as this version would certainly get an R rating if sent into the MPAA. The Blu-Ray transfer is good enough but it is clearly an early Blu-Ray remaster that hasn't been redone since. Hopefully they will make a better transfer at some point for the next inevitable Blu-Ray boxset.

Overall I would say that this is a fun movie with a lot of good action and effects. However, the characters aren't particularly fleshed out and the plot is somewhat incoherent. If you catch this movie on television or find it cheap then it is worth a watch but it is far from a deep movie or one that requires a lot of legitimate thought. We'll see if the sequels fare any better.

Spoilers

The morality in this movie definitively sits in the gray area which I think makes it more interesting. The reveal that it was actually Lucien that started the war and killed Selene's family legitimately caught me off guard and makes it much more complicated as neither the vampires nor the Lycans can really been seem as more or less moral than the other.