It's weaker than the first in almost every way, making it feel like a franchise installment sequel, but it still has a lot of what made the first a classic.

The caveat is that the visuals in general, and the special and practical effects are still fantastic, along with the visual style and the 4K copy I watched streaming on Bravia Core looks fantastic. It's "dark", but there's always high visibility even in a lit room.

The weakness comes in the storytelling and editing/shot length—it all just feels rushed. The film is gorgeous, with great action cinematography and crisp, dramatically lit shots of the actors and creatures, and creature-characters, but the shots are all too short when the bullets aren't flying, like it's in a hurry to get to the next scene. There's also some cheesy B-horror movie style rando vampire chick nudity/violence that just feels trashy and out of place in Underworld.

Tanis is great, though. And the love scene between Scott and Kate is beautifully and sensually shot and edited, with I think the perfect use of score and audio editing; just a little of the initial lip smacking, and then the scene audio fades out, replaced by score.

Another big weak point to me was both the out of left field casting of Derek Jacobi as Corvinus, and the fact that his character was such a passive limp sock of a man. I remember being disappointed when I first went to the theater all super hyped up. Compare that to Tony Curran's intense but human Markus, or Bill Nighy's un-fucking-forgettable and iconic turn as Victor—or even Zita Görög's Amelia. All of them seemed bigger than life and like ancient, otherworldly, human-shaped horrors. And then there's fucking "I cAn'T KiLl mY oWn cHiLdReN!" David the Gnome. Yeah, well Selene sliced dark daddy Victor's face in half, you sack o' potatoes.

It had been a while since I'd seen this film, but, re-watching it now I think that _Rise of the Lycans_ stands above this one. Scott Speedman doesn't have much opportunity to be interesting given the writing and pace, whereas Michael Sheen really gets to shine in a ~genre~ film. But here, it's still great seeing Kate lady-run in strappy goth platforms and then do cool wire-work in full view of the camera, never blinking whilst firing an array of European automatic weaponry.