Vampires and Werewolves Went to War on a $22 Million Budget, and the Box Office Answered

Len Wiseman’s Underworld premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on September 15, 2003, and reached U.S. theaters on September 19 under the Screen Gems banner. It runs 122 minutes. Its tagline promises “An immortal battle for supremacy,” and the film mostly delivers on that promise with a straight face.

The premise is a secret war. Vampires and Lycans — an old species of werewolf — have fought for generations without the human world noticing. The vampires thought they had won. They were wrong.

Trailer, via Lakeshore Entertainment.

Selene and the Death Dealers

Kate Beckinsale plays Selene, a vampire assassin in an elite group called the Death Dealers. Her job is hunting Lycans, and she is good at it. The other vampires have stopped taking the threat seriously. Selene has not, and that stubbornness is the engine of the whole film.

After a clash with the Lycans, Selene learns they are chasing Michael Corvin, played by Scott Speedman, a resident doctor who looks ordinary and is not. Kraven, the vampires’ second-in-command, tells her to drop it. She ignores him and investigates alone.

The pair is pursued by Lycans led by Lucian, played by Michael Sheen, who bites Michael during the escape. Since Kraven was the only witness to Lucian’s supposed death, Selene begins to suspect that he lied about the death and may be working with the Lycans.

Viktor Wakes Early

Selene prematurely wakes Viktor, a hibernating elder vampire played by Bill Nighy. She hides Michael in a safe house and binds him, expecting the bite to turn him into a werewolf when the full moon rises.

While they wait, the two bond, and Selene tells Michael her past. Viktor adopted her and turned her into a vampire after her family died at the hands of Lycans. That loss made her a hunter. She also explains that Michael’s hallucinations are memories Lucian passed to him.

Viktor, furious at being woken early, refuses to believe her warnings about Kraven’s treachery. He reminds her that his fellow elder Marcus should have been awakened before him. Meanwhile, vampire elder Amelia is traveling to the mansion to wake Marcus. The film keeps stacking these obligations and betrayals until the coven’s rules collapse under their own weight.

What the Cast Carries

The film’s best asset is its cast, and the table below shows how the pieces fit.

The screenplay is by Danny McBride, from a story by Kevin Grevioux, Wiseman, and McBride. That gives the film a coherence a lot of franchise starters lack: the person playing Raze helped build the world Raze lives in.

A Franchise Starter That Earned Its Sequels

Underworld is Wiseman’s feature directorial debut. The film received generally mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. That reception did not stop it. Against a production budget of $22 million, Underworld grossed over $95 million worldwide — a surprise hit, and enough to originate a franchise. Underworld: Evolution followed in 2006.

The comparison worth making is not to other vampire films but to the film’s own ambitions. Underworld wants to be a war epic and a love story at once. It is better at the war. Selene’s arc — duty against desire, clan against conscience — is the part that holds up, and Beckinsale plays it without winking at the material. Sheen’s Lucian is the other standout, a villain with a grievance rather than a growl.

What dates the film is not the leather or the blue-grey palette. It is the pacing. At 122 minutes, the middle stretch spends too long on coven procedure. The film is strongest when it is simply Selene and Michael in a room, deciding what they owe each other.

None of that changes the verdict. Underworld took a modest budget, a first-time director, and a premise that could have been ridiculous, and built something durable. The sequels exist because the first film did the hard work of making audiences care about a war they can never see.

Kate Beckinsale · Len Wiseman · movie review · Underworld · vampire movies · werewolf movies