Like peanut butter and chocolate, vampires and werewolves are two great tastes that taste great together. That was the promise of the original “Underworld,” the 2003 flick about the eternal war between the two ghoul tribes that rages right beneath our noses. While the original did fall flat in places, and  some unnecessarily complicated things happened that we can’t really remember very well, it did deliver some hardcore vamp-wolf action; it was, at least, adequate.

The sequel, “Underworld: Evolution,” isn’t. Picking up just moments after the conclusion of the first film, the sequel plunges us right back into action of some sort, although it’s not clear why. From there, we just stumble along—or are dragged—through one contrived action sequence after another.

It’s really not about the war between vampires and werewolves this time; rather, it’s about a series of things that happen to Kate Beckinsale’s character Selene and her boyfriend. Yes, Beckinsale looks great in black vinyl vampire-armor, and she looks great holding a gun, and she looks great kicking ass, and she looks great striking a pose, and she looks great mostly naked—we get it. It doesn’t really make for much of a movie, though—maybe a video, or a specialty-market DVD, or maybe just fan fiction.

Especially sad is the waste of Derek Jacobi, who exudes all the proper gravity of a fine actor when he appears as Corvinus, the first immortal—but as soon as we find out who he is, he dies. That’s frustrating because a) it makes for a fairly pointless immortal, but also because b) he could have brought a lot more to the movie, if someone would have just written him a part.

Which is all a complicated way of saying that this is a movie without a story, without writing. It’s slick and fast but makes little sense and has no purpose, clearly an afterthought product meant to cash in on the first movie’s niche-goth fan base.

A litle thought would have gone a long way here.

starring Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman and Derek Jacobi
directed by Len Wiseman
rated R for pervasive strong violence and gore, some sexuality/nudity and language