What it’s about: Based on a story by Danny McBride (not that one), Robert Orr, and Len Wiseman, the third film in the Underworld series is a prequel to the original, telling a backstory of the struggle between the lycan Lucian (Sheen) and the vampire elder Viktor (Nighy). In a vaguely medieval period, not long after the start of the conflict between werewolves and vampires, Viktor created the Lycans–werewolves able to hold on to their humanity, rather than becoming mindless beasts–to serve the vampires as a slave class. Lucian was the first and most favored of these new creations, but he began to overstep himself, calling out the unjust treatment of the lycans and becoming involved with Viktor’s daughter Sonja (Mitra), leading the lovers into conflict with her tyrannical father.

Reflections: This is not a “good” movie. It unironically contains the line “But father, I love him!”–that’s the level we’re working on here. Visually, the color palette is almost non-existent, lighting is a somewhat foreign concept, and the fight scenes are over-edited and full of awkward CGI werewolves that just look silly at this point. Every story beat is exactly what you think it’s going to be, played out with a relative minimum of personality. It’s all very stupid. But this also not a movie that’s really supposed to be “good;” this is a movie you watch because it’s very stupid–the mall-goth vibes and melodramatic teen angst level of storytelling are kind of the point. And on that level, it somewhat works, if not as well as the previous films.

Most of that is down to Nighy and Sheen reprising their roles in the franchise, the former stalking around and glowering like he was made for it, and the latter bringing what energy he can to the tropey role he’s in, and kind of working it against type as the sweaty, brutal hero figure. Rhona Mitra is fine; nobody else has that much to do, but things do occasionally indulge in a particularly sweet bit of action choreography or an especially metal shot of the castle where most of the action takes place and drop enough breadcrumbs of cool to see it through.

If you give in to it, there is a certain cheesy sweep to the “I’m gonna swordfight your evil dad”-type horny vibes, but the change in setting means it doesn’t quite have the “Kate Beckinsale shooting dudes while doing flips in leather” kind of rizz that’s the reason I picked up the box set in the first place. I don’t know that I’ve actually watched the last two (yet), but that lack makes it the least fun of the first three. It’s not offensively bad, but not necessary to seek out unless you’re really getting into the franchise.