Underworld: Awakening (2012)

Underworld: Awakening arrives as the fourth entry in a franchise that has never pretended to be anything other than leather, gunfire, and gothic architecture. Selene, played by Kate Beckinsale, is thawed from twelve years of cryogenic suspension to discover that humanity has learned of the immortals and is conducting a systematic purge of vampire and Lycan alike. There is a daughter, a corporation, a super-Lycan, and a great deal of running through corridors. The film knows what it is. So do we.

There is a temptation, when auditing a picture like this, to award credit for the mere presence of a black actor in a supporting role. Michael Ealy and Sandrine Holt appear, competently and without comment, which is precisely the point: their casting carries no framing, no thesis, no announcement. The villainous Antigen corporation does its wicked work with the usual corporate blandness, though the screenplay never once suggests that the problem is capital itself. Selene remains a capable woman who kills things efficiently, a posture that predates the current cultural moment by a decade and arrives with no accompanying argument. Nothing here concerns identity, climate, the body, the mind, or the historical record. The film is a machine for delivering violence in a trench coat, and it delivers.

What remains is a competent genre exercise with an A-minus from audiences and a far colder reception from critics, which is roughly the correct distribution of opinion. The picture opened at number one and became the franchise's highest earner, proving that appetites for this sort of thing remain robust regardless of what the discourse demands. We file it accordingly: a sequel, a box office victor, and a specimen of near-perfect cultural inertness. There is something almost restful about it.

Thematic tags: sequel, box_office_number_one. This is the fourth installment in an established series and it reached first place at the domestic box office during its opening weekend. No other classifications apply. The film is not adapted from a book, not a remake, not based on true events, not concerned with superheroes, and it won no Academy Awards. It is, by every measurable standard, simply itself.

One closing observation for the ledger. A film can be loud, profitable, and entirely silent on the questions of its moment. This one is. We record the finding without complaint. The archive requires completeness, not enthusiasm, and completeness has been achieved. The vampires may return. The taxonomy will be waiting.