After being under-whelmed by Underworld, and downright bored by Underworld Evolution, I was prepared to treat Rise of the Lycans with only a passing interest. Low and behold though, this rather dullard looking franchise took a left turn into actual engagement. Amazingly, it only took three films for the Underworld folks to find even half the potential for their horror/action/S&M fetish combo platter, but it says something more that even at its best, the Underworld films deliver marginal thrills. While the execution has substantially greater levels of gusto, the core problem with the series remains the same: it borrows too heavily from its genre forbearers to be taken seriously.

This Underworld takes a detour to the distant past and reintroduces us to minor faces of the franchise’s past. (So no tight-leather clad Kate Beckinsale in this one boys. Sorry.) In a medieval castle, the vampire lord Viktor (Bill Nighy) has bred half-breed Lycans that can transform back to a human form, the first being his favourite “pet” blacksmith Lucian (Michael Sheen). What Viktor doesn’t know though is that Lucian’s loyalties is not out of a slave’s gratitude for some modicum of freedom, but because Lucian is in love with Viktor’s daughter Sonja (Rhona Mitra), and she with him. But Viktor’s anger and pettiness over the affair spurs Lucian to revolution; leading his werewolf brothers in a rebellion against their vampire masters.

So yes, it’s 90 minutes of film taken from about five lines of dialogue in the script of the original. Firstly, Rise of the Lycans suffers from “prequelitis,” where any chance of a compelling story coming out of the antics on screen is foiled by the fact that we already know where it’s all going. If the appeal of doing a prequel has any merit, it’s that you get a chance to flesh out the details more and really develop characters and relationships that might have suffered in the originating chapter for whatever reasons. One marked area of improvement is the romance angle. Sheen and Mitra make a much more believable couple than Beckinsale and her werewolf beau Scott Speedman ever did. Granted, that accomplishment didn’t require much of a push to make the win.

But if there’s a real benefit to this movie, it’s that the central characters are played by two distinguished and talented British thespians. The right actor can take B-movie drivel and remind you that a film can be more than a two-bit, RPG rip-off with delusions of X-Men. Unfortunately though, this is not the case with Rise of the Lycans. There’s something about Nighy, right down to the way he’s lighted, that screams Disney villain; from his skeletal face bones to his scenery chewing delivery. Sheen comes off better and certainly seems commanding enough to be believed as the George Washington of the werewolves. However, this doesn’t stop the movie from being too terribly shallow, and there was definitely room for improvement in terms of how some of the relationships played out.

And still, everything is shot in that horrid, blue gel that makes everything look so fake and staged. There are times the entire production seems more like an elaborate LARP scenario than a movie, just because of the pedigree of the actors sometimes makes you do a double take as to how they were compelled to be involved in this in the first place. Working in favour of this Underworld though is that it seems to truly embrace its core idea, and it seems that the movie’s got its act together more here than in the previous films. But core improvements don’t erase the fact that this entire series feels like it was ripped off, and it’s as uninspired now as it was when the first film was released way back when. Perhaps the makers of Underworld can take a cue from other horror franchises: just remake already.