underworld: awakening

I wasn't sure what to expect with this fourth film in the underworld series.

I enjoyed the first one quite a bit, but found the second one underwhelming and a little confusing.  The third film was actually a prequel and was okay, but really Selene (Beckinsale's character) was the only one that was interesting and she wasn't really in it.

This fourth one does star Selene, but also introduces a daughter (sort of).  Now when actresses and characters get older there seems to be a bit of a thing for them acquiring children.  I mean, don't get me wrong, obviously people get older and have children, but when those characters are odd (vampires or superheroes or whatever) the children thing is also normally odd (not really a child, but a clone or whatever).

I dunno, you can get some weird stuff in order to force the film down the whole maternal instinct path.  And that's basically the case here - the maternal thing is pretty much crowbarred in.

However, if you set that aside, I actually quite enjoyed the film.  Selene is still quite an interesting character and it doesn't hurt that Beckinsale seems even more gorgeous (she may be of equal gorgeousness, but the previous films were a long time ago!).  I mean, don't get me wrong, the story was a bit poor, constructed of quite a lot of clichés, but then if you're watching the fourth Underworld film, why would you be expecting anything less?

No, what I enjoyed was the visual look of the film, the action and the special effects.

Now it's not all great the film was shot in 3D and there were a few of those stupid moment they always build in to have stuff flying out at the audience but then look daft when you watch them non-3D (and daft in 3D if you're of that persuasion) but it wasn't too bad here.