Underworld: Awakening (2012)

It's not easy to keep a series going and keep it all as fresh and interesting as before. Sadly, this is one of those cases where it all starts to falter. 'Underworld: Awakening' is not actually bad, but it's not memorable either, and that is a shame, seeing as the previous outings usually had a scene or several scenes that stuck in your mind. But before we go into the why, maybe a little plot might help you along.

Selene and Michael have been captured and put on ice. Humanity learned about the existence of both vampires and Lycans and began to hunt them down. It's called The Purge and it's easy to draw comparisons with genocidal acts. After twelve years, Selene thaws and escapes an institution. She keeps getting flashes and she thinks they are from Michael. They turn out to be from a little girl.

You all know where this is going, right?

Of course, it turns out the girl is Selene's daughter and a hybrid. Actually a quadruple one then, because Michael was one and Selene herself was altered by the blood of Corvinus.

Oh, Michael actually isn't in this film. Just so you know.

The plot thickens even more when it turns out that Lycans have devised a serum to make them more powerful and they are now poised to reclaim their dominance over the planet. If that plan sounds insane, don't worry: it actually is the master plan here. I figure they forgot that humans know they exist and have been hunting them down with no remorse, but hey: you get a Super Shredder type of werewolf this time, so there's that. And he looks exactly as silly as he sounds.

'Awakening' feels like a major step back after the pretty good second outing in the series, and this for several reasons. For starters, they turned back the character of Selene. She was just beginning to get a personality and here she's back to being the stoic, nonplussed version of herself, which feels a little off. If you discovered you had been stuck in ice for twelve years and had a daughter that was experimented on, wouldn't you be a little angry? Well, not discernable here. The Lycan idea had some merit, but it's handled rather poorly. It's just: evil scientist created a monster that will assume dominance. (insert evil laughter here) The main scientist is played by Stephen Rea, who often turns in a good performance, but here he just didn't seem to care. They did get Charles Dance to play a vampire elder, but he is not given a lot to do. The best performance comes from the twelve year old girl and the human police detective who is sympathetic towards vampires.

The action set pieces are a plenty, but they don't really exhilarate anymore. Maybe it's because there's so much CG this time around and it looks iffy, to say the least. Especially the Lycans look like absolute crap. Sure, it's explained that they are mangy and dying and thus look more like bizarre rats, but still, they are horrendous. And the Super Lycan just looks silly. Trust me, you'll laugh. He also feels like one of those hulking videogame bosses. Bigger is not necessarily scarier. For those who know some 'Dragonball Z': the ultimate, most powerful form of archvillain Frieza is small and unassuming and that is a lot more threatening than something huge.

The film does fly by at a brisk 85 minutes, so there's that.

There's no doubt it's always fun to see Kate Beckinsale, once again clad in her trademark leather and vinyl and she can play a bona fide action star. We need more ladies kicking backside, that is the truth. But 'Underworld: Awakening' is unfortunately not a very memorable or good film. It's great for when you have nothing better to do, though.