Underworld (2003)

It opens with a voiceover talking like it's a recap, even though it's not a recap because nothing has happened yet and this isn't a sequel. But now we know there's a vampire/werewolf war. The vamps are winning. Kate Beckinsale dresses like she wishes she was in The Matrix and hunts werewolves for a living. Everything is a puke 70s green shot through a strong blue filter, because I might have actually selected The Matrix by accident.

Werewolves use uzis, and vampires release a glowing blue smoke when they die. Neo Kate wears a long, black leather trenchcoat and shoots dual automatic pistols in slow motion. It's all thrilling fast-paced action, with an average of 1.2 seconds per shot. The werewolves ca nwolfify at will, but only do so when the camera calms down or the uzis run out of shells (it's about 9 million shells per uzi). Neo's Kate's pistols also contain several million rounds, after which she switches to slow-motion throwing stars. All vampire weapons are silvery, which must be expensive.

Werewolves live in abandoned subway tunnels and have dog-fights, and vampires live in a decadent romance-era palace and read books. Werewolves can run on ceilings and walls, but progress slowly. Both vamps and wolves regenerate fleshy bits.

Neo Kate gets a werewolf's gun and notices that it glows blue. She takes it back to the palace where they immediately determine that it's military-grade ultraviolet light bullets, which makes sense. They plan their reaction with dialog befitting a 14-year-old's The Matrix fanfic. Neo Kate goes off to stare at the fancy locks in the floor, which you know have to fill with blood to unlock some ancient vampire because you've seen any vampire movie before.

Neo Kate pulls up surveillance footage on her cutting-edge laptop and clicks "enhance," and figures out that the werewolves are trying to get some human. They're just hauling ass through the story; no time for dramatic pauses, we've got action scenes to get to. And, like most vampire movies, they have to spend a good deal of it reminding you of what a vampire is and using all of the vampire terms a few times. It's "coven," like "oven."

Neo Kate gets to the human that the werewolves want first, but then werewolves arrive and everyone fights everyone and there's a car chase with swords like that Neko Case album cover. They say three or four disjointed one-liner sentences, the camera cuts a few thousand times, and the sewers probably clog with spent bullet casings. Neo Kate survives, but passes out so they can dramatically flip the car into an ocean. The human tries to save her, even though she's a murderous freak who pinned him to the ceiling and fired wildly through every surface of the building without even introducing herself.

Character development isn't really featured in this film. The longest conversation is about 5 sentences. Sometimes they say the first and last line of a conversation, and I guess you're supposed to fill in the middle bits yourself. Neo's Kate's boss is in league with the werewolves, has the worst lines, and delivers them terribly.

It turns out you don't even need blood to open the sacred old vampire door. Just… twist? Truly underwhelming. But you need to fill it with blood afterwards, so that's something. Neo Kate awakens the eldest vampire, who has been dessicated and kept in dry storage, to ask him a question. This is all strictly forbidden, but vampire guards are bad at their jobs. "What's this ruckus?" he inquires when he wakes up.

They fight around in circles until the human becomes a werewolf to the jammin' tune of some 90s industrial music. The vampires kidnap a werewolf who directly explains the whole plot to us, namely that the head werewolf, Aziraphale, it trying to turn himself into a dreaded vampwolf. He's been at war with the vamps for a millennium because they killed his vampire girlfriend. They shoot each other for ever and ever and Neo Kate makes out with the human.

The human becomes the vampwolf instead and fist-fights the head vamp for much too long. He's dressed like a black-painted version of The Hulk from the 70s TV show. Neo Kate saves him, I guess, but he didn't really need saving… he was just off staring at a wall by himself.