Underworld (2003)
A mess of under-written characters making nonsensical decisions, convoluted lore and badly directed action, garnished with shameless The Matrix and Cube thievery. Bill Nighy as a petulant Elder is the film's one saving grace.
Rating: Very Bad
Underworld Evolution (2006)
Has most of the first film's issues. Convoluted lore is a little more understandable from a sequel, but by making everything inter-related, it introduces some holes (if the necklace is the key to William's cage, and Selena's father made it - which must have occurred after Sonya's death - then how is that Lucian has had it since Sonya's death? Also, can't remember which one this was in, but apparently Viktor has been lying about how he's the first vampire, but if Marcus was going to be woken up before him, how was he planning to maintain that lie?).
At least there's a proper lead villain, and there are a couple of decent action scenes (the 'winged master vampire vs truck' scene, and the castle ruins finale).
Rating: Bad
Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans (2009)
This one finally has protagonists with a quantum of depth, and the action is fine though it compensates for its weaknesses with choppy editing and shakycam. However, it falls into a couple of common prequel traps: there are no stakes as we know what happens to all these characters past the events of this film, and it mostly feels like a wiki filling in continuity gaps. Even so, it doesn't explain the plothole from the previous movie and even introduces some odd inconsistencies of its own (re-casting and vampire hair colour rules).
Rating: Meh.
Underworld: Awakening (2012)
The action in this one is dull, leans even more on CG, and reaches new heights of silliness when it comes to characters missing their shots - vamps empty whole clips into blank walls and at one point Selena fails to hit a lycan from six feet away, duel wielding full-auto handguns, while they're both in an air-vent.
The story meanwhile is a shambles. It bins the promising set-up from the end of the previous film, starting after some time has passed and the world has completely changed, then takes a main character out of play, and then does a time-jump! A big problem with this franchise is that it's always starting with a change to the status quo without ever showing us the status quo, and it does it twice in the first ten minutes here! Plus it's full of new, paper-thin characters with weak motivations speaking in accents and styles that don't make sense. These movies always had weak characterisation and lots of plotholes, but for a franchise so focused on continuity this feels like a rush-job (especially as it's around 80 minutes long before credits).
Side-note: it's pleasing to see the movies' amusing habit of casting skinny, pointy-faced British character actors as sexy super-strong monsters expand out to wobbly-faced British character actors, with Stephen Rea.
Rating: Very Bad
Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)
Another rush-job. Again, previous set-ups are either immediately binned or forgotten about (Michael is killed off and Eve is put in hiding, both offscreen, and the humans seem to have given up on their war against vamps and lycans). Weapons, weaknesses and powers are shown once and never used before or after, or even mentioned and then immediately disproved. Most hilariously, the Scandinavian vamp coven declare they are safe from lycan attacks because of the extreme cold, a problem the lycans solve by wearing warm coats. Incidentally, the writers of these films seem to think you can get from the US to Scandinavia by train or to Russia by car.
The story is a slight mix of previous plots. By the end of it the franchise has for some reason fully switched sympathies from the lycans to the vamps, though it doesn't really matter as they're all now varying shades of 'scheming arsehole'. The assumption seems to be that the only reason the audience might care about a character is whether the actor continued to sign up - those whose don't are binned unceremoniously, those who do aren't given any actual depth outside of 'you know, the one you saw in the other films'.
The action has one or two nice moments but is mostly at the bland aimless level of a network tv show.
Rating: Very Bad
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