DVD
Upcoming Release Calendar
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Recent DVD/Video Releases
58
Adam Resurrected
65
Adoration
42
Aliens in the Attic
56
American Violet
44
Answer Man, The
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil![]()
58
Away We Go
54
Battle for Terra
55
Casi Divas
63
Cheri
83
Drag Me to Hell![]()
76
Every Little Step
70
Fados
26
Filth and Wisdom
80
Food, Inc.
34
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
32
I Love You, Beth Cooper
50
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
81
Il Divo![]()
32
Land of the Lost
74
Lemon Tree
43
Love 'N Dancing
64
Lymelife
50
Management
63
Medicine for Melancholy
56
Monsters vs. Aliens
34
My Life in Ruins
48
Not Forgotten
76
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!
50
Nothing Like the Holidays
26
Objective, The
54
Observe and Report
78
O'Horten
42
Orphan
48
Proposal, The
40
Shrink
55
Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
35
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
88
Tulpan![]()
66
Unmistaken Child
45
Whatever Works
34
Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Underworld

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 82 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Fantasy | Horror
Written by:
Danny McBride (also story)
Kevin Grevioux (story)
Len Wiseman (story)
Directed by: Len Wiseman
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 19, 2003
DVD: January 6, 2004
Running Time: 121 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Germany / Hungary / UK
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence/gore and some language
Starring Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Shane Brolly, Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy, Erwin Leder, and Sophia Myles
Underworld reimagines Vampires as a secretive clan of modern aristocratic sophisticates whose mortal enemies are the Lycans (werewolves), a shrewd gang of street thugs who prowl the city's underbelly. (Screen Gems)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Underworld: Evolution
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
At heart, this is an old-fashioned monster flick decked out with Hollywood's full battery of high-tech visual effects. It's as goofy as it is gory -- stay away if you don't like in-your-face mayhem.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's Shakespearean in its political machinations and closer to "Saving Private Ryan" and "Starship Troopers" than to "Dracula" or "The Howling."
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
However much Underworld recycles elements from other films, it carries us into a well-constructed, convincingly scary world worth visiting.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
The filmmakers' decision to go with prosthetic enhancements rather than CGI gives the snouts, fangs and snapping jaws a refreshingly tactile look.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
It is the perfectly cast Beckinsale who lifts Underworld out and away from the films many moments of silly gravitas and steers it into a truly interesting take on the whole vampires 'n' werewolves genre.
Read Full Review >Premiere Peter Debruge
Riddled with ammunition for what Alfred Hitchcock called the "Plausibles"--those poor-sport moviegoers who insist on pointing out a movie's inconsistencies instead of simply enjoying the ride
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
An example of a vampire movie for the new century -- stylish, gothic, gory, and loud.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
As murky and derivative-looking as the film is, it moves with an authority that pummels you into submission.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
Has one other thing in common with "The Matrix Reloaded" -- too much story, too many angles.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
Visually it's wild fun, since fledgling feature director Len Wiseman started off in production design, and creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos's diverse credits span from "Godzilla" to "Stuart Little." Yet with Underworld's guilty pleasures come copious clinkers, from its nuts-and-bolts narrative foundation to Wiseman's inability to direct actors beyond cartoonish interaction.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
The funny thing about all this is that a half-hour into Underworld I couldn't wait for it to be over. When it really was over, I couldn't wait for the next installment. Go figure.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Charles Savage
A loud and relentlessly overstated B-movie, and yet not entirely stupid.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It's so impossible to care about the characters in the movie that I didn't care if the vampires or werewolves won. I might not have cared in a better movie, either, but I might have been willing to pretend.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Though it sometimes feels as if it's four hours long, Underworld has going for it an intriguing fantasy premise, an eventful plot and a look that is diverting, if finally a bit monotonous.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Takes itself so seriously that it never has fun with its shopworn genre elements.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
Alas, as is often the case with lower-end genre movies, the story cooked up by Wiseman and his friends, actor Kevin Grevioux and the film's screenwriter, Danny McBride, is decidedly less important than the look of the film and its influences.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan
A slick disappointment -- though there's much unintentional humor to be enjoyed.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
By the end, I was starting to ponder questions like, If a vampire mates with a lycan-vamp hybrid, which parent will have to convert?
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
All of this is accomplished with buckets of blood, but almost no sense of flesh: It's hard to recall a more sexless vampire flick.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
So clotted with back story that the Romeo and Juliet-style romance between a warrior vampire and a reluctant werewolf never has a chance to breath, Len Wiseman's revisionist horror tale is all look and no bite.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Chuck Wilson
Beautiful in its dark, contrasting blues and blacks, Underworld is nonetheless a remarkably humorless movie, and not even the adroitly hammy Bill Nighy, as the vampire king, can leaven the overwrought seriousness of it all.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This is the silliest horror movie I've seen in years, though some of the special effects are pretty good.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Anita Gates
Achieves only loudness, aggressive confusion and one of the silliest head-splittings in film history.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Beckinsale delivers even if Underworld doesn't quite manage to follow through on its initial promise.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
125 minutes is a long time to stare at a movie that's basically in bleached blue-and-white with occasional splotches of brick red. The palette reinforces the monotony of the storyline.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Not since "Battlefield Earth" pitted overacting, nine-foot-tall Psychlos against puny man-animals has there been an interspecies match-up this perversely uninteresting.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Kevin Carr
There's too much pretension in this film. Lots of intense stares into the camera. Lots of uncomfortably hip clothes. Lots of pompous names for themselves.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Plays less like a novel re-imagining of a classic if campy narrative than a drearily self-conscious exercise in Know Your Film References.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Neither side is worth rooting for in this ridiculous blood feud, which features some of the year's most laughable dialogue.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
"Your incompetence is most taxing," says the chief vampire (Bill Nighy). A line that pretty much nails this rusty Blade.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub
Could use script transfusion, or at least a few quarts of levity.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
It needs a wooden stake AND a silver bullet through its script.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Alex Pappademas
Speedman's such a nonentity here I worried that the theater air-conditioning would blow him off the screen.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 82 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Carlos F gave it a4:
The plot is too over-the-top, taking it self too seriously. Beckinsale doesn't really act a lot, but Speedman is completely irritating. This is a derivative movie, nothing is really happening, just a bit of fighting and some unespected "plot twists". However, is basically a CGI-action movie.
Tommy S gave it a9:
Very good vampire vs werewolf movie. If you like The Matrix you'll probably like this film.
Ian G. gave it a7:
This is an ambitious, great-looking, adequately acted piece of popcorn entertainment. Sure, it's terribly written, and some of the werewolves look more like Muppets than petrifying flesh-eaters, but 'Underworld' provides loads of fun for both our beer-swilling commonfolk (shit blows up) as well as serious cinemaphiles who are willing to sit back and have a blast with this fun-as-hell B-movie.
[Anonymous] gave it a1:
Kate Beckinsale looks good in leather: that's the only compliment I have for this movie. Sex appeal is the best way to catch a man's attention in an action film. Throw in some decent fight scence and you got an acceptable movie. But this film couldn't even pull that off. I was bored as hell watching this. The gothic style of the film is bland and cliched. The fight scenes are pretty stupid. I remember this one scene where Kate's character fires hundreds of rounds of bullets with her puny pistol (yes, a pistol) into a door with bad guys waiting on the other side. She never reloads once until the fight is over with just a little clip. That's ridiculous and realistically impossible.
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
One of the best movies I've ever seen. It's not a popcorn movie with emphasis on coolness with little depth for watching casually while cracking jokes with friends like Matrix, Blade or Terminator2, but if you are willing to dive in you'll be rewarded with an unmatched athmosphere and a great plot.
Kevin L. gave it an8:
OK, Gone With the Wind it's not -- but stylish yet violent supernatural fun it is, in spades!
Riren gave it a1:
Atrocious, even for a popcorn flick. The action sequences and "plot twists" feel like the fat they cut off the Blade movies. Coincidentally, almost everyone in this world of eternal rainy nighttime dresses like they were expecting a walk-on on Blade II. You can't expect too much creativity from a movie that basically steals vampires, werewolves and leather - but this is still insultingly bad, especially with its generic soundtrack and poor acting.
