From the archive: "Underworld: Evolution"

Enough teenage boys shelled out for 2003's mediocre vamps-versus-werewolves tale Underworld to justify (if not merit) a planned trilogy. Given the overwhelming pointlessness of the sequel Underworld: Evolution, though, it might be best if we put a stake or silver bullet through this franchise now, before any more time or money can be wasted on it. This time around, Kate Beckinsale's sulky Goth go-between Selene has vamp-related family issues to be dealing with, so off she and chosen-one sidekick Scott Speedman plod, from one blue-grey Eastern European location to the next, encountering one gravel-voiced, oddly-named make-up job after another. Everywhere they venture, however, narrative coherence appears to have been junked in favour of more of the self-justifying mythological tosh that made the later Matrix films incomprehensible to anyone over the age of fifteen.

Actually, Evolution sparks false nostalgia for the misbegotten Blade sequels, which at least wasted interesting performers. The bland-and-blander leads here, a couple unlikely to set too many pulses racing, share the dullest sex scene in years (camera glued squarely to the Beckinsale navel, nudity clauses preventing any movement north or south), while recruiting Derek Jacobi in a tunic dignifies proceedings about as much as it did to pair Judi Dench with Vin Diesel in The Chronicles of Riddick. The rest is undistinguished evisceration, with one pair of plastic breasts thrown in for the especially hormonal, an 18 certificate that keeps out the target demographic, and sporadic flashbacks to the first film because, in his heart of hearts, even the director knows none of this is remotely memorable.

(January 2006)

Underworld: Evolution screens on Film4 on Monday night at 11pm.