This blog post is part of the Agora Road Travelogue for July 2025

Put another one to the list of films I watched at some point during my childhood but that I don’t remember a single thing about. I remember buying the DVD. I remember watching it in my parents’ bedroom which, as I have mentioned before, was the only place in the house with a DVD player. What I don’t remember is if I liked it or not.

When I watched Underworld the past week, one of the things I liked the most was how goth the whole thing felt. Maybe I need to remind you, but goth was a big thing during the 2000’s… goth and dark and emo and everything in between. From Death Note to Avril Lavigne, people would obsess over the aesthetic, probably as a symptom of the ongoing battle for defining ourselves on the computer screen through the usage of, then emerging, social media, but most likely as a continuation of the necessity of the youth to manifest their identity through fashion and music. An argument for the latter would be the fact that goth and goth mainstream media were already a thing way before the double naught’s. Exemplary movies of such could be Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and of course, The Crow.

The movie is infamous for being the one that caused Brandon Lee’s death, in an incident that, all the sadder, somehow keeps happening in Hollywood. Someone shot a blank-loaded but cannon-obstructed gun at him in the chest causing him to bleed to death. A very sad end for what some, including myself, consider a very promising would-be star.

The movie takes its goth aesthetics very seriously, from the music to the lighting to the perpetual rain. If you told me this was a Tim Burton movie, I would believe you. The story is a revenge story. Brandon Lee’s character, cleverly called Eric Draven, comes back from the dead to haunt those who caused so much pain to his fiancee, Shelly (maybe a reference to Mary Shelley?). In a one-by-one manner, Brandon Lee eliminates every one of them, in a performance that alternates between corny and badass, switching from wittiness to life advice in a fashion that somewhat resembles what Heath Ledger’s Joker would do in the years to come (another life cut short, coincidentally).

The special effects are noteworthy, with an excellent mix of practical and digital effects. It is outright impossible to detect which scenes were not played by Lee if you are not paying attention (I was, and couldn’t do it). I would also like to praise the villain of the movie which, although maybe archetypical for the era, plays a very nice balance with the protagonist.

Overall, a very entertaining watch that I would recommend to anyone who is looking for something with that edge to it, or in general, to any action-junkie out there.