Underworld 2: Evolution (2006)

I've only ever seen Underworld 2: Evolution once before and I pray to the old gods and the new that I never have to watch it again. I remember it being pretty boring the first time and that feeling was only redoubled when I watched it for a second time.

It starts out quite well, with a flashback to the year 1202. The three vampire elders, Viktor (Bill Nighy), Markus (Tony Curran) and Amelia (Zita Gorog) are cleansing a village of werewolves and searching for Markus' twin brother, William, who is also the first werewolf. It's a good scene and it's also nice to see people fight with something other than lots and lots of guns. However, it's all downhill from there, I'm afraid. Back in the present day, Markus, newly awakened from his slumber, proceeds to finish off Kraven (Shane Brolly) and then sets out to find his brother. Selene and Michael decide to go looking for Markus to make their case to him but then change their mind shortly before he attacks them for seemingly no reason. They decide instead to visit exiled vampire historian Andreas Tanis (Steven Mackintosh), who delivers torrents of completely unfathomable exposition. Meanwhile, an old man on a boat called Lorenz Macaro (Derek Jacobi) examines the bodies of Viktor, Amelia and Lucian. He finds the second half of a pendant inside Viktor, the first half of which was in Lucian's possession until he died and Michael took it from him. The pendant turns out to be the key to opening the prison in which William has been locked and Markus wants it so that he and his brother can rule the world.

It's complete and utter horseshit. What was once well thought-out mythology has become nonsensical rubbish. More than half of the film is taken up with various characters talking endlessly about "hybrids" and "bloodlines" and "purity" and introducing various new centuries-old characters. The other half consists mostly of gunfights that make the first film look like The Matrix. No-one can hit a target barely twenty feet from them and apparently a massive werewolf can survive being locked in an iron maiden-like coffin for hundreds of years without dying of starvation or thirst.

Markus, who is literally an overgrown bat, spends most of the film flapping round and stabbing people with his talons, then drinking their blood to steal their memories. We are at least spared from Shane Brolly's dreadful acting as he dies within the first twenty minutes but nothing can spare us from Scott Speedman. Kate Beckinsale growls her way through the film and Derek Jacobi wanders round like he can't believe what he signed on for. Neither can I, sir. Neither can I. Bill Nighy once again hams it up so much in his flashback scenes that I thought he would actually grow a curly tail. It might be almost half an hour shorter than the first film but it drags so slowly you'd think it was just as long. Endless scenes of utterly inane dialogue about god only knows what and gunfights on ships, in castles and in the forest are all mixed together and covered with a very liberal blue coating to arrive at this contrived mess. Avoid like the plague.

2 out of 10.