For those who have been waiting with bated breath for the back story in the UNDERWORLD mythos, the time has come with UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS. Everyone else can go about their lives in an orderly fashion secure in the knowledge that they are not missing a thing.
Set in a time somewhere before the modern age, and after the invention of the corset, it explains how it was that vampire-coven master Viktor (Bill Nighy) dealt with both the defiance of his beloved daughter, Sonja (Rhona Mitra), and the encroaching hordes of wild Lycans, that would be werewolves, overrunning his territory. Aside from the danger to his vampire coven, there is the embarrassment inherent in not being able to protect the humans, from the Lycans anyway, who inhabit the region around his big, spooky castle, the one that’s underground and away from the pesky sunlight that would reduce him and his kind to cinders. There are other problems, namely Lucian (Michael Sheen), the suitably sinewy blacksmith, who is one of the many Lycan slaves kept by the vampires in the castle, who, despite being Viktor’s particular pet, is determined to free the Lycans. He’s also the pet of Sonja, but in a different, more carnal way. Master and slave, vampire and Lycan, sure they don’t seem to have much in common besides preternatural good looks and semi-immortal hormones, but there’s also the supernatural creature thing, a mutual love of defying convention, and disturbingly stringy hair.
Alas, they are less than discreet, but because the film needs time to spin out its scenes of gore, sex, and silly dialogue, no one has noticed except an ambitious vampire with designs on a seat on the coven council, and so he’s willing to keep his mouth shut for reasons that barely make sense even in what passes for logic here.
It doesn’t matter. The point is for Sonja and Lucian to get into and out of one scrape after another as swords clang, three-pronged arrows whoosh, and blood spurts with the same insouciant ennui that pervades the film as a whole. Sometimes they are in the dungeon, living out larger than life S&M fantasies; sometimes they are outside the castle, living out larger than life martial fantasies. Sometimes they are apart and miserable. Sometimes they are together and miserable. Usually Lucian is wearing a fetching loincloth. Usually Sonja is wearing a fetching corset over a chainmail jumpsuit (the designer gets a special credit all her own). The further point is for Bill Nighy, essentially playing a shrunken head in a nifty black and spangly duster, to look annoyed while also looking like death warmed over.
Which is not to say that there are no points of interest. There is the large African human who is able to punch out a Lycan with one blow. There is the sneaking suspicion that it’s not just sunlight that will turn a vampire into charcoal, but perhaps also wearing anything pastel. Perhaps just being around anything pastel, so weighted is the art direction with dull gray and black. When a chalice of red blood appears, it’s almost blinding.
UNDERWORLD – RISE OF THE LYCANS is as dusty and sere as a vampire’s crypt. An exercise in Goth excess without a flicker of imagination sent to stupefy the unwary.
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