Underworld: Blood Wars arrived in select countries on November 24, 2016, and reached the United States on January 6, 2017. It is the fifth and final installment in the Underworld film series, a sequel to Underworld: Awakening. It runs 91 minutes. It is not enough.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Anna Foerster Takes the Chair
Anna Foerster directs from a screenplay by Cory Goodman, based on a story by Kyle Ward and Goodman. Kate Beckinsale returns as Selene, the vampire death dealer, alongside Theo James as David, Lara Pulver as Semira, James Faulkner as Cassius and Charles Dance as Thomas. Tobias Menzies plays Marius, the Lycan leader hunting Selene to find Eve, whose blood holds the key to building an army of vampire-werewolf hybrids.
That is the engine of the plot, and it never turns over. The remaining vampire covens are on the verge of annihilation. The vampires want Selene tried for Viktor’s death. The Lycans want her bloodline. Selene spends the film being chased between two factions that both want something from her, and the script never decides which one matters.
Prague, and the Look of the Thing
Principal photography began in October 2015 in Prague. The film has the flat, overcast look of a production that spent its money on sets and not on staging. Foerster, working with a $35 million budget, keeps the camera close and the action small. The Nordic Coven stronghold at Var Dohr is the one location with any weight to it. Everything else is corridors and council chambers.
The Betrayal at the Eastern Coven
Semira, a council member of the Eastern Coven, asks Thomas to plead Selene’s case. The council grants a pardon in exchange for Selene’s help. Selene arrives with David and trains the coven’s neophyte Death Dealers.
Then Semira and Varga, her ally and lover, poison Selene, slaughter the trainees and frame her for the atrocity. With Selene in her custody, Semira drains her blood, intending to drink it and steal her power. Thomas and David rescue Selene. Thomas dies in the process.
It is the film’s best idea, and it lands with no force at all. Charles Dance is the only performer given anything like a scene to play, and he is gone before the third act.
What the Cast Is Asked to Carry
| Character | Actor | Function in the film |
|---|---|---|
| Selene | Kate Beckinsale | Death dealer, hunted by both species |
| David | Theo James | Selene’s ally; revealed as heir to the Eastern Coven |
| Semira | Lara Pulver | Council member who betrays Selene |
| Marius | Tobias Menzies | Lycan leader searching for Eve |
| Thomas | Charles Dance | Vampire elder; dies rescuing Selene |
| Vidar | Peter Andersson | Nordic Coven elder who reveals David’s parentage |
Trent Garrett takes over the role of Michael Corvin from Scott Speedman, who played him in two of the previous four films. Speedman appears in archival footage from Underworld and Underworld: Evolution. Zita Görög, who played Amelia and had retired from acting, also appears in archival footage from Underworld: Evolution. India Eisley, who portrayed Eve in the fourth film, appears in archival footage from that film.
The Ice, and What It Costs
At Var Dohr, Elder Vidar reveals that David is the son of Grand Elder Amelia, making him the legitimate heir to the Eastern Coven. Alexia, a neophyte Death Dealer and Marius’s secret lover, tells Marius where Selene has gone. Marius and his Lycans attack. Selene and David fight alongside the Nordic vampires, led by Vidar’s daughter Lena. Alexia stabs Selene. Marius demands Eve’s location, learns Selene does not know it, and sounds the retreat. Selene deliberately drowns under the broken ice.
That ending is meant to be a sacrifice. It reads as exhaustion. The film has spent 91 minutes moving its heroine between locations without letting her want anything she is allowed to keep.
The Lowest-Grossing Film in the Franchise
Underworld: Blood Wars grossed $81.1 million worldwide against a $35 million production budget, the lowest-grossing film in the franchise. It was panned by critics. The tagline is “Protect the bloodline.” The film cannot decide whose bloodline it means, and by the time it does, the ice has closed over the answer.
The franchise did not need a fifth film. It needed a reason. Beckinsale still wears the role without strain, and the David reveal is a genuine piece of series architecture, but it arrives in a movie that treats it as one more errand. The archival footage is the tell: this is a film assembled from what the series already had, not from anything new it found. The lowest gross in the series is not a surprise. It is the correct result.
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