Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)

Underworld: Blood Wars arrives as the fifth entry in a franchise that has long since settled into its own weather system. Selene, played with grim commitment by Kate Beckinsale, fends off Lycans and the vampire council that betrayed her, and the film moves through Prague-shot corridors of blue light and leather. It is a gothic fantasy with swords, werewolves, and an uzi, and it has no interest in the world outside its own mythology. No historical record is revised here. No climate anxiety intrudes. The vampire economy is dynastic and martial, untouched by any critique of wealth, and the bodies on display conform to the usual action-hero geometry. There is nothing to score on those fronts, and the film seems content with that.

What the film does carry is a modest, older strain of female empowerment. Selene remains physically dominant, a death dealer who rips out a spine and keeps walking. Anna Foerster becomes the first woman to direct an entry in the series, and the supporting cast includes a scheming female villain in Semira and a warrior in Lena. This is empowerment of the pre-2015 action-heroine variety, asserted through combat instead of thesis. The cast remains overwhelmingly white and European, drawn largely from British and Nordic stock, so any modern accounting of representation comes up thin. The film does not comment on this. It simply is what it is.

Critics complained that the film is heavy with exposition, and they were right, though the talk is genealogical machinery, not moral instruction. Nobody lectures the audience about how to live. There is no sermon, no cause, no lesson folded into the bloodletting. For a genre picture released in 2016, that absence reads almost as an artifact. The result is a film that is tired, stylish, and entirely unpersuaded of its own importance, which is a rare vintage in this market. We can respect the restraint even as we note the box office, the lowest of the franchise, and the 21 percent approval rating. The cellar is well organized. The wine is thin.