First Hit: This dark film had very few interesting or believable moments.
The other action woman based film I saw this weekend was this one.
Kate Beckinsale plays Selene a hybrid vampire and lichen. She is not fully trusted in the vampire group who hide underground. The lichens are also underground because the humans declared war on both sets of non-humans.
Yes, this is a lot to suspend belief on, and if the filmmakers, writers and directors did a better job of setting it up it might have worked better. They didn’t and therefore I sat there watching a darkly shot film with unbelievable action performed by someone who didn’t own the movements as her own. In other words, she wasn't authentic.
Yes, Beckinsale is good looking, her eyes are sharp and wonderfully contrast against the background, but I didn’t buy the premise that she was her character.
Eve (played by India Eisley) is Selene’s daughter. She’s unaware that she had this daughter. Yes, hard to believe but the setup is that while Selene and her former lover Michael (a lichen) were housed in chambers Dr. Jacob Lane (played by Stephen Rea) crossed them and created Eve. She was developed to provide new antibodies for lichens so that they don’t succumb to silver.
In essence this film is about a mother protecting her daughter.
Beckinsale, although very attractive, just didn’t emote the strength to be the heroine of this film. Rea was fine as the lichen Dr. Lane. Eisley was probably the best of the lot in her role as sometimes innocent and other times big time powerful monster. Len Wiseman and John Hlavin wrote a very week script while the dark direction was unfortunately led by both Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein.
Overall: Pretty much a waste of 88 minutes and of course it is open-ended for a follow-up film.