The Awakening

*Warning: This post contains spoilers.

I went to see Underworld: Awakening a few weeks ago when it was first released into the theaters.  I’ve always enjoyed the Underworld series for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they have a kick-ass leading female character.  I had high hopes for the newest installment of the series and I was not disappointed.  I found the movie to be engaging and it was able to keep me on the edge of my seat for the entire film.  It was action-packed, full of surprises and something I didn’t expect, it included a family aspect to it.  Let me start from the beginning:

The humans learned about the existence of vampires and Lycans and have decided to declare war on both sets of clans, which is referred to as “The Purge.”  Selene and Michael are attempting to escape the madness of it all, but alas, they are found and chased down.  An explosion leads us to wonder if the pair survived the blast or if they’ve only been severely injured.  The audience is then whisked away to twelve years into the future, to a lab where a creature seems to be trying to escape.  Through the eyes of what is later called “Subject 2,” the audience sees Selene is trapped in a sort of cryogenic encasement.  Subject 2 frees Selene–also known as Subject 1 to Antigen (the company holding her)–before fleeing so it is not captured by the guards.  Selene slowly begins to awaken to find herself in a lab and most of her clothes and equipment conveniently stored in a near-by glass cabinet.

As Selene is set to escape, she begins to have visions which she believes is a link between her and Michael.  She is able to escape Antigen and continue to follow the visions until she runs into a fellow vampire, David.  While being caught up as to what has happened since she had been captured, Selene has another vision which leads her to an unexpected surprise, a young girl.  It is later discovered that this girl is Subject 2 or Eve, whom is also a hybrid and Selene and Michael’s daughter.  It does not take long for Selene to realize who Eve really is, which is what I found interesting about the family aspect of the movie.  Without ever meeting Eve, Selene was able to recognize that it was her daughter.  The question I had was: would she have realized Eve was her daughter if she was not seeing visions of what Eve was seeing?  My hypothesis is that she would have recognized her.  Why?  Because I think that mothers naturally have the ability to recognize their children regardless if they had seen them previously or not.  I believe there is a natural connection between mother and child, even between father and child.  My thought is that for the movie they decided to enhance this natural connection so that Selene and Eve could find one another more easily.  I also found it interesting that Selene’s natural instincts were to protect Eve when they were attacked by an underground Lycan clan that continuously tries to attack them as the trio try to escape.

When the trio does escape and make it to David’s father’s underground coven, it is found that Eve feels as if Selene has slighted her.  She had higher expectations for her relationship with her mother, but what she doesn’t understand–and is later explained to her by Selene–is that she never meant to be “cold” toward her, but rather she was grieving over finding out that there were rumors that Michael had died twelve years ago in the explosion.  It is obvious that Selene cares for Eve deeply and it is at that moment when the two come together to talk that Eve finally understands that.  Selene’s love for her daughter is furthermore displayed upon seeing her fight tooth and nail against the Lycan clan that ambushes the vampire’s lair.  After the fighting is over, it is show that David has died while in battle and that his father has given Eve over to the Lycans so that they leave the coven.

Selene, enraged, decides that she is going to save her daughter, but before she leaves she does one thing for the ungrateful father, Thomas: she resurrects David.  She takes her leave before David is fully awake, deciding that she needs additional help with what she about to attempt.  She searches out Detective Sebastian, who has appeared throughout the film investigating a series of crimes that have been going on.  He agrees to aid Selene and the audience is informed that he was once married to a nurse who was turned into a vampire; however, she had decided to kill herself rather than to become a victim of The Purge.  With Detective Sebastian’s help, she is able to infiltrate Antigen–which has been discovered to be run by a clan of Lycans–and destroy part of their building and kill more Lycans than I can count with the use of silver gas explosives.  This forces Dr. Lane, the head of Antigen, to move Eve from the building, but with the help of Sebastian they are not able to get far.  While destroying the Antigen’s headquarters, Selene finds an interesting discovery: Michael is alive.  He was also captured and cryogenically frozen in a laboratory twelve years ago.  She begins the defrosting process so that he is able to escape before going after Dr. Lane and Eve.

She is confronted by a giant Lycan, Dr. Lane’s son Quint, whom she has to fight while trying to get to her daughter.  Meanwhile, Detective Sebastian stops the van with Eve, who awakens and aids the detective in fighting Dr. Lane who has injected himself with a formal which slowly turns him into a super-lycan of sorts.  After a long, bloody battle, Selene and Eve are reunited.  Selene explains that she has found Michael and they run back to where she had originally found him to see that he has escaped and has seemingly left the facilities.  It is then that Eve’s connection with her father kicks in, showing her through a vision that he is on the roof; another interesting aspect of how they connect the family together.  They run to the roof to look for Michael, but he is nowhere to be found, which leaves us, the audience, wondering where he has gone.

So it looks as if there will be at least one more installment of the movie franchise.  As I’ve mentioned throughout this piece, I find it fascinating the way they have decided to go about connecting the family to one another.  They’ve used a natural connection that seems to be typically formed in real life between parents and their children–more so between mother and child in my opinion–and decided to enhance it.  I often wonder if a mother and child or father and child would recognize one another despite not ever meeting.  If they passed one another on the street one day, would they know?  Would there be some connection between the two that allowed them to realize who the other was?  From what I’ve seen and what I’ve been told when a baby is first born and is crying, as soon as it is placed in its mother’s arms, it settles down as if it knows right away that woman holding them is their mother.  So, if they are separated for one reason or another–adoption, the child is taken away, etc.–would there still be a connection later in life?  It’s a lot to think about.  What are your thoughts on the subject, readers?

Going back to the movie for a moment, I would highly recommend it to those who are fans of the Underworld movie series and would also recommend it to those who are into good action films.  They did a wonderful job on the movie and I cannot wait to see it again.  Happy movie watching!

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Felicia