Horror Film Reviews: Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans

The third film in the underworld franchise goes back and serves as a prequel to the first two underworld films and it explains some of the back story of lucian who is the first human lycan that can change form at will and is the leader of all of the werewolves and the new breed of Lycans that the vampire king has created to protect the vampires own cities.

The film itself is a rather hit and miss affair, it is good, but it tells you some stuff you already know, so it makes it rather redundant, although it serves as a prequel to the other two which fills in some of the origins of these characters, it adds nothing more, except more werewolves...yay!

The story focuses on Lucian and his secret love Sonja, who in the second film we saw a flashback to her being burned by the sunlight and killed by her father the vampire king (Bill Nighy) and so we see some de ja vu in the third film but with all the details put into perspective.

The beginning of the war between vampires and Lycans begins here, so really this film should have come out first logically, but what do I know? but movies are always following this trend to go back and tell the before events of a classic film, I suppose it adds something to the story and cements the mythology with a prequel.

The werewolves are some of the best invented make up effects I've seen since American werewolf in London although most of the effects are digital, it's nice to see some good quality prosthetics worked in there too, the film directed by Patrick Tatopolous who designs creatures for many films has a hand in the films look and feel with more creative input as a director.

The film has the blood and gore of the previous two films, which is nice and that is to be expected with a film that has vampires and werewolves in, although the vampires take a back seat a bit in this film, they are there, just not too much fang action.

The ending is merely a simple set up for the following two films later on down the time line, so nothing special happens at the end, no real climax or ending shocker, just an average ending, but this film is good to see the mythology complete before and after, now we just need a conclusion in the present with the half vampire lycan michael and that would round this film series off quite well I think.

So if you are a fan of werewolves then this film is for you, I bought it last week and enjoyed it as a standard fill in film until the next one that I choose to buy, although I prefer the first two films as they sort of sit well together sort of like a two part film.

Buy it if you want it's going cheap right now!