The invention discloses a safe electronic lock and an unlocking method. The unlocking method comprises the following steps: S1, an original image capture step; S2, an original image preprocessing step; S3, an original image verification step; S4, a finger living body verification step; S5, an unlocking step. According to the unlocking method, in order to realize unlocking of the electronic lock, multiple verifications such as original image verification, finger living body verification and password verification need to be performed successively, and unlocking can only be realized when all the verifications are passed, so the safety performance of the electronic lock is greatly improved; during finger living body verification, pieces of feature data obtained by collection are coupled into three-dimensional data, a fingerprint center point is obtained in the three-dimensional data according to a fingerprint center point location algorithm, and whether a finger is a living body or not is judged by the relative position of the fingerprint center point and a finger vein, thus preventing another person from fabricating a finger and passing verification, and improving the safety performance of the electronic lock.