'Awakening' makes for a bloody mindless good time

Release: January 20th, 2012

Cast: Kate Beckinsale , Michael Ealy, India Eisley, Stephen Rae

Directors: Måns Mårlind & Björn Stein
                   
Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes          Rated: R                  

It has been six years since we last saw Selene (Kate Beckinsale), and it seems that everything has gone to hell in a hand basket for our heroine in Underworld Awakening.

The human population is now privy to the fact that there's not only one but two races of monsters living among them, and they are none too pleased. The world can't tolerate either species' existence so it's not a safe time to be a Lycan (werewolf) or a Vampire as the humans try and purge both from the world.

In an attempt to flee, Selene is captured and becomes a test subject for 12 years, until she is set free by an unknown fellow test subject. Selene is released into a changed world, one that she barely recognizes. The once powerful Vampires and Lycans are nothing more than a whisper of their former 

glory hiding in the dark.

Restoring order or glory is not is not Selene's concern. What drives her is finding this escaped test subject who set her free, because there is something about the person that is getting the attention of both her and the Lycans, and she wants to know why.

The Underworld series has always been a turn off your mind and roll with it kind of series, and Underworld Awakening is no exception. It's Lycans and vampires trying to kill each other, and it gets pretty messy people.

In Underworld Awakening I guess you can throw actual people in that fight too, which just makes for more people to dispatch in stylistic (if not grisly) way.

No one really does take Lycan, human, or even vampires out like Selene being once what was called a death dealer, she tends to be good at what she does. Now she is fighting just to stay alive, and for me no one can make this character work like Beckinsale.

In Underworld Awakening, Beckinsale simply makes Selene a badass, even after a six year break from the character. The choreography and the words written are all well and good, but without a good delivery, they are meaningless. In the case of Beckinsale, she delivers.

Underworld Awakening also delivers on more of a future centric theme, and brings a little more emotion to the  forefront. The Underworld series has up until this point played in the past  a little.

For this film, the trouble is not found in the past, but in the here and now. This changes things a little in that things don't feel ancient, there is no historical reference. I liked how the subject material felt old, but that's lost out to the new problems at hand and an attempt at a more emotional movie.

Attempt is the right word, because at the fast pace Underworld Awakening moves and the lack of depth many of the characters have, it's really hard to feel anything. There are a few moments where you feel a little something, but those are fleeting and forgotten quickly.

Much of this film is forgotten quickly, and it's got a few problems with predictability and random happenings, but at the moment when one is watching our badass vampire heroine shredding though a world she hardly recognizes Underworld Awakening is a lot of fun.

Grade: C