Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Dir: Patrick Tatopoulos

2009

**

What do you do when you've killed off all the good characters of your franchise, are fresh out of ideas and your leading lady is pregnant? You make a prequel and pretend you're doing something new, even though you spend the last two films telling the exact same story. The whole film is as as ridiculous as casting Michael Sheen as a bare-chested action hero (which it does). However, due to Sheen’s celebrated talents of impersonation, it is a bit like watching Tony Blair/David Frost fighting vampires and kicking werewolves, which sound brilliant and awful at the same time and is both brilliant and awful in reality. The Underworld films survive by being watchable, Rise of the Lycans is by far the weakest entry in the series but is also perhaps the most watchable, thanks to Michael Sheen’s performance. I’m a big fan of Rhona Mitra (I went to University from 1997-2000, so she was on my bedroom wall) so it was nice to see her in the film, I didn’t like the film really but I watched the follow up but only because they went back to the original story and I'm somewhat glutton for punishment. It’s a good example of why prequels should often be avoided, period films that feature an action/horror theme rarely work either and it actually spoiled a lot of  what was enjoyable and original from the first two films. It is what you get when you put the guy who made the werewolf costumes from the first film in charge, when he had absolutely no directional experience.