First few minutes review of UnderWorld

First few minutes review of
UnderWorld

At the beginning of this film there is some brief logos and start credits then it shows the title of the film 'Underworld', this is shown on a completely black background and the cloud is a dark sliver colour this makes a bit mysterious and gives it a dark mood but also seems a bit too simple compared to the title sequence on most other big films. There is no music but there is some sound effects added to the sequence this helps make the mysterious and dark feeling.
The title the cuts away at the same time as the sound of a lightening strike, it cuts to a shot of the celling of a build then it tilts to head hight. While this happens a non-diegetic voice is heard giving us a brief prologue to the film, While the voice is on there is a series of shots all mainly set around Selene who is perched on the ledge of a building in a rainy night and a few of another vampire taking picture of two Lycans who are walking on the busy street below in their human form.

After Selenes finished the prologue (the audience is expected to have worked out its her voice because of the shots of her when using the word I) she jumps from the ledge, as soon as her feet hit the street below the background music starts, again helping the dark mysterious mood.

Selene and the other 2 vampire death dealers follow the Lycans into a subway station. The Lycans follow one human on the way there are 6 closes ups of Selenes and the humans faces showing eye contact, this give a feeling that something else mysterious is going off. The Lycans carry on following the human (Michael Corvin) towards then end of the platform until they realise there being followed the Lycans then open fire with sub-machine guns, killing Rigel (One of the 3 Vampires) within moments. During this the music builds up then goes silent then the Lycans notice this build up suspense of the fight that's about to happen the music restarts again getting loud after the first bullets have been shot this makes the whole fight sequence more exciting.

After the Lycans retreat from Selene's barrage of machine pistol fire and the arrival of a third Vampire Death Dealer Nathaniel, Selene tracks them to their lair, as Nathaniel is slain by Raze while pursuing the Lycan and is ambushed. Raze overpowers Nathaniel by knocking his weapon away as he tries to reload and then goes to his full Lycan form, killing Nathaniel off screen. Upon reaching the Lycan lair, Selene kills the Lycan she was following using a lot of bullets showing how hard they are to kill while she's killing him there are bell sounds in the background which I found make the death seem more dark, powerful and gives a feeling that time is up. Selene takes the dead Lycans gun to find that the Lycans have developed a new high-tech bullet to kill the vampires, as seen with how Raze killed Rigel. Selene hears the last Lycan (Razer) that had transform into his full Lycan form, Razer jumps down into the Lycan lair where Selene throws 4 spinning throwing blades then runs off. The shot of the blades is 1st person in slow motion from the Lycans perspective which makes it more interesting a dramatic. To show Selene running there a series of close up tracking shots of her feet.

Even though this is only the first 10 minutes of the film I think it is interesting it tells a lot of the story for such a small part of the film and it has a lot of action and suspense and shock. I think the story line seems simple up to now but gets more depth as the film goes along, and although it doesn't tell us much about what is happening the music, sound effects (both diegetic and non-diegetic), title's and uses of dark tones/filters using a lot of blues, greys and blacks help us know its going to be something big, mysterious and sinister is going off and that its going to be action packet. Using these it also keeps up suspense to keep the audience guessing what's going to happen next, on the edge of there seat. The beginning also makes a lot of questions that will be answer later on in the story to keep the film interesting. On example of these questions is we have just been shown a fight scene where we are following a normal human this makes us think this is no ordinary man and something more.

(Link to first few minutes > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPH743Zd18Y

By Karl Swales.