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Van Helsing Review
by Ray Garton
 2004
Written and directed by:
Stephen Sommers
Starring:
Hugh Jackman - Van Helsing
Kate Beckinsale - Anna Valerious
Richard Roxburg - Count Dracula
I cut my horror teeth on the classic Universal monster movies from the ‘thirties and ‘forties. Those old black-and-white images are burned into my memory – misty old graveyards, gadget-heavy laboratories, Frankenstein’s monster lumbering through the woods, Lon Chaney Jr. turning into the wolfman. Yes, those movies are clunky by today’s standards, but they still possess a certain evocative visual poetry.
I first heard about Van Helsing some time ago, while it was still in production. I was thrilled to learn the movie was going to bring back those classic old monsters. I was less thrilled when I learned it was being helmed by Stephen Sommers. While I enjoyed his movies Deep Rising and The Mummy, I loathed the CGI overkill of The Mummy Returns. I figured Van Helsing could go either way.
It went the wrong way.
Van Helsing begins promisingly enough with a black-and-white sequence featuring Dr. Frankenstein bringing life to his monster in his whirring, flashing, sparking laboratory while angry, torch-wielding villagers rage outside. But the sequence ends all too soon, and the action begins – and it never, ever stops.
When we first see Van Helsing, he’s going after Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde looks like the Incredible Hulk, a big lumbering beast out of a computer.
Sommers claims to have great affection for those Universal monsters, but you’d never know it by watching Van Helsing. Frankenstein’s monster is a big pasty blob, the wolfman is a computer generated cartoon, and Dracula is a whiner. They bear absolutely no resemblance to the majestic black-and-white creatures of old.
The plot – and I use that word loosely – is paper-thin and hardly worth mentioning. Van Helsing is an exercise in replacing story with non-stop action. Sommers pounds us with endless action and plenty of loud music. If you took the action out of this movie, you’d have nothing at all left – that’s all it is, action. Sommers’s opinion of his audience does not seem to be very high – he thinks we need non-stop action to hold our attention, the span of which he apparently believes to be extremely short. Anyone who needs that much action to sit through a movie is in need of some Ritilin.
Van Helsing is instantly forgettable. I’ve already forgotten much of the movie, and I’m still forgetting it as I write this. It’s leaking out of my brain at an alarming rate, and I just saw the movie.
Hugh Jackman plays Van Helsing, who is a kind of James Bond of the monster set. He leaps, he swings, he bounds. Jackman isn’t given much to work with – his performance is mostly running and jumping.
As Dracula, Richard Roxburg has none of the presence required for the role. He’s one of the worst Draculas I’ve ever seen.
I’m growing weary of CGI. When will filmmakers come to the realization that it just doesn’t look real? The wolfman in Van Helsing is nothing more than a CGI cartoon. He looks like he should be menacing Little Red Riding Hood or the Three Little Pigs.
The wolfman is at the center of one of the movie’s most annoying inconsistencies. The wolfman changes under the full moon, as the legend goes, but this wolfman changes back to a man when a cloud passes over the moon. He remains a wolf-monster when he’s indoors, away from the moon’s glow, but if a cloud covers the moon, he returns to his human form. It makes no sense at all, but Sommers expects us to buy it.
The most memorable creatures in the movie are Dracula’s brides, who fly around like harpies. They’re menacing, with a touch of camp, and they’re the best monsters in the whole movie.
Van Helsing is very attractive visually, due in part to the cinematography by Allen Daviau. Editors Bob Ducsay and Kelly Matsumoto apparently cut the film in a Cuisinart. The picture is visually engaging if nothing else, and it’s not exactly boring (which is why it gets two bloodshot eyeballs). But ultimately, it’s mind-numbing.
If you like those old movie monsters as much as I do and you’re looking to revisit them, don’t go see Van Helsing – instead, rent 1984's The Monster Squad. It’s a great little kid’s movie that’s fun for adults, too, in which Dracula gathers Frankenstein’s monster, the wolfman, the mummy, and the gillman to find a magical amulet that will allow them to take over the world. The only thing standing in their way is a bunch of kids that call themselves the Monster Squad. It shows far more respect for those old monsters than Van Helsing, and it features great old-fashioned special effects by Stan Winston and Richard Edlund – no CGI!
If you must go see Van Helsing, don’t say you weren’t warned.
[Out of a possible four Bloodshot Eyeballs.]
Dagon
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