If you hated the first one, you’ll probably hate the second one. If you loved the first one . go see the sequel now! If you didn’t see the first one, you’ll probably be able to keep up with the plot, but I recommend getting a feel for the subject matter before you spend eight bucks. It is, after all, a vampire-werewolf-action-fantasy-thriller. Vampires (a.k.a. Death Dealers) and lycans (a particularly rebellious sect of werewolves) have been at war for centuries. In Evolution, the vampires are the good guys and the werewolves are bad guys.

The main male character, Michael – who is sexily played by Scott Speedman – was a human; but now, through some wicked lycan plot that I didn’t understand in the first Underworld, he has become a half-breed. He is now half vampire and half lycan.

Seline – sexily played by Kate Beckinsale – is on a quest to avenge the death of her family a century or two ago.

In an interesting sidenote, it seems as though there are no female lycan. There are plenty of female vampires. I guess the filmmaker didn’t want to turn off the audience by showing a beautiful woman savagely rearranged into a hideous hairy beast. Not so sexy.

Michael and Seline quite predictably fall in love during their quest, and on the way kill tons of lycans and a couple of big monsters.

This movie is gory. Unbelievably gory. Besides the usual vampire flesh-dining scenes and rib-popping werewolf transformations, everything has blood on it. The production crew must have hired a blood continuity supervisor to keep track of where all that blood should be and when. Or maybe it was just “when in doubt, smear blood on it.” There is so much blood, in fact, that by the end of the film I was desensitized to it, and normal people looked unnaturally clean. Underworld: Evolution might be an appropriate movie for a Valentine’s date, if you and your significant other think of the heart as merely something that pumps blood through the body.

The only thing that makes the bloodiness of the film tolerable is the fact that it’s about creatures that live in the realm of fantasy. Many vampire movies show the human dimension of the vampire world in the form of the suffering victims at the hands of overly eroticized creatures. Underworld and the sequel Evolution focuses on the war between lycans and vampires. There are a few human victims (known as innocents) in this one, but mostly vampires and lycans are the ones who expire gruesomely.

A plot device that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before is the blood-memory transfer. When a vampire drinks the blood of another vampire, the memories of that vampire are transferred to the bloodsucker. This sneaky set up allows the audience to see the past while at the same time filling in plot holes.

Apparently, some vampires enjoy taking the memories of their fellow creatures of the night. “Why should I listen to your lies when the path to the truth is so much sweeter?” the ancient vampire Marcus says to the other bloodsucker he is about to munch on.

I found it ironic that Evolution’s most human moment is in the love scene. Yes, there is a love scene. And yes, Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman get naked. And yes, it does seem gratuitous. But so is covering every available surface with blood. You don’t go to a horror flick for its social message. You go to see wanton violence, nudity and general bedlam.

My favorite moment from the film is when the half-breed Michael uses his bare hands to liberate a lycan’s upper jaw. The audience actually gasped. How do you know an action movie is good? In this case, the audience leaves the theater a little more ashen than when they went in.