Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Aberrant Ghoul

Review by Aberrant Ghoul

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans 2009

★★★½

Rewatched 26 Feb 2020

From Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man to Freddy vs. Jason. From King Kong vs. Godzilla to Alien vs. Predator. For almost as long as we've had movie monsters, we've been pitting them against each other for our own entertainment. Here, in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, it's all out war between vampires and lycans (werewolves), with a story of tragic romance and slave revolt that feels, tonally, somewhere along the lines of Spartacus: Blood and Sand or Braveheart. Furthermore, this story is presented with a visual aesthetic that feels like someone combined Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings with Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, albeit more dimly lit and with a blue filter applied throughout.

It's certainly the most ambitious film in Len Wiseman's Underworld franchise. However, it also feels like it was a completely unnecessary prequel. I can't figure out why we needed an origin story for a character that was unceremoniously killed off in the first film, other than to give Michael Sheen and Bill Nighy a chance to inhabit these characters a bit more. But hey, I'll take it. I quite enjoyed watching Michael Sheen as werewolf Spartacus, and Bill Nighy provides an antagonist you'll love to hate. This was fun, but I still can't figure out why we got this instead of another film following the story of Selene and Michael Corvin, which I was just starting to get really into after the previous film.

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