Underworld: Blood Wars
Director: Anna Foerster
Talent: Kate Beckinsale, Theo James, Tobias Menzies, Lara Pulver
Released: 13th January
Underworld: Blood Wars, the fifth film in the long-running leather and vampire series, opens with a lengthy bit of narration that brings the audience up to speed with the goings-on in Underworld-land. It all sounds like the ramblings of an excitable child who’s dipped into their older brother’s Crow and Spawn comic books. Everything in Blood Wars is dark and covered in leather, or latex, or some leather-latex combo. It’s the kind of silly, high-camp aesthetic that could work so well were it not for the film’s po-faced seriousness.
Blood Wars is joyless and jokeless. It’s suffocating. It’s a something of a cop-out to criticize a film for what it isn’t rather than what it is, but Blood Wars is charmless, self-serious, low on thrills and laughs. Audiences will have to suffice with making their own fun of the beautiful, leather-clad fighting people. This movie wouldn’t dare crack a smile.
Words – Luke Maxwell
