Day 18 of my 31 Days of Vampire Movies Features brings you one of the bluest movies ever made.
Underworld is the pinnacle of style over substance. This movie looks amazing. The dark, gritty color palette, painting the world in every beautiful shade of dark blue, transports you into a slick, seductive world of the undead, where the pallor of their skin gleams like moonlight and the faint tracings of pale blue veins under their skin betrays what they truly are. Blue slides off and hugs the curves of black leather and cold steel in a way that seems almost fetishistic. Even the blood has a cold blue edge to it, when vampire movies usually go so far in the other direction with red.
But that is the best thing about Underworld. The acting is okay, for the most part, but veers into over the top and camp more than it should. The plot, when you think about it for even a second, falls apart with utter ridiculousness. It’s a Romeo and Juliet story with vampires and werewolves, but the head vampires, centuries old and supposedly crafty and intelligent, make some of the most boneheaded moves I’ve ever seen. Any idiot could see through Craven’s (my God, telegraphing that character’s heel-turn, weren’t we Screenwriters?) duplicity, and the werewolves aren’t much better. The plot was just the framework for the aesthetics, which are top notch, I only wish the movie’s writing and character development were just as good.