Movie Review: Van Helsing

Van Helsing

You already know I love horror movies, but you may not have been aware that my favorite movies - and books - involve vampires. I just adore vampires. You know what other guilty pleasure I enjoy? Watching The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, two among my favorite movies of all time. When I heard that Van Helsing was being filmed, I could hardly wait until opening day. After all, we're talking a monster movie featuring Count Dracula himself and helmed by the able direction of the same man who put together The Mummy movies, Stephen Sommers. Such a collaboration just had to be good. Didn't it? Well, the short answer is: No.

If you've read the original Count Dracula, or seen any of the movies that have stayed relatively faithful to their source material, forget all that now. In Van Helsing, Hugh Jackman plays a man unlike the Van Helsing we knew from earlier efforts. This newer model is younger, directly involved in the fighting himself, and has supernatural qualities of his own. (What precisely are those qualities and how did he get them? The movie never tells us.) He works for a secret sect of monks based at The Vatican, and his job is to kill or capture evil creatures wherever they may be found. Early in the film, he's sent by his bosses to Transylvania to save the immortal souls of nine generations of one family by incidentally offing Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh). Unfortunately, he doesn't arrive early enough to save one of the last members of the family in question - Velkan Valerious (Will Kemp) - from being turned into a werewolf. And when he does arrive, he doesn't find himself particularly welcomed by the heir apparent, Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale). Never-the-less, along with his companion, a friar named Carl (David Wenham), he intends to fulfill the mandate he's been given.

Anna only grudgingly accepts Van Helsing's assistance after he shows himself a rather able ally in a fight against Dracula's brides (Aleera, Verona, and Marishka, played by Elena Anaya, Silvia Colloca, and Josie Maran, respectively).Carl, who has invented many of the weapons Van Helsing employs, does his best to stay out of the real fighting, but his bumbling genius does come in handy on occasion. Meanwhile, Van Helsing finds help in unexpected places even as he and Anna accidentally discover the whereabouts of Frankenstein's monster (Shuler Hensley), and use Dracula's assistant, Igor (Kevin O'Connor) to get close enough to the vampire to attempt to kill him.

Hugh Jackman is more than capable of playing a superhero - witness his performances as Wolverine in the X-Men franchise - but he's limited here to making monotone and oftentimes cryptic remarks. Kate Beckinsale, who proved in Pearl Harbor that she can act, for some reason doesn't bother to do so here. In fact, her over-the-top Transylvanian accent could very well show up in the future in acting classes as an example of one of the worst artificial accents ever to be heard in a movie. Ever. Thankfully, Richard Roxburgh is a joy to watch onscreen, capturing the anger and frustration of Count Dracula at the same time he manages to convey the longing buried deep inside the cruel creature. And while David Wenham offers an able performance and some ham-handed comic relief of sorts, it's a shame to see the Lord of the Rings hero Faramir reduced to a clumsy and eccentric coward.

The make-up and special effects are superb in Van Helsing. Frankenstein's monster is brilliantly rendered, and the sight of vampires diving from balconies and taking flight is breathtaking. There's a masquerade ball in which Count Dracula dances past a mirror that's an astounding example of just how special effects ought to be done, and another involving the vampires walking on the ceiling of Castle Dracula that's mind-bending. The stuntwork is also high quality, and the CGI work blends well with the live action sequences (Industrial Light and Magic was responsible for the effects work, and as usual proved up to the challenge). Although CGI monsters are still not quite realistic enough for audiences to not realize that the werewolves are, indeed, computer generated, as a whole the effects are very, very good. And the sets for Van Helsing are amazing. Some are real (much of the filming was done in Czechoslovakia, including the scenes of a village built just for the film), while others were created on a sound stage (Castle Dracula, for one). But all of the sets are fantastic.

Unfortunately, it appears the movie's substantial budget was spent on effects, sets, and getting a few name actors rather than on a script. Van Helsing has an anexoric plotline, and many of its scripted lines are even worse than that. Don't believe me? How about when one character tells another, "You're supposed to die." The other responds, "But I want to live!" And the first character says, "Oh, okay," and proceeds to save his life. In another scene, Dracula asks Igor, "Why do you torment him so?" after Igor has tortured a werewolf. Igor tells the Count, "Because that's what I do." These are real lines, I kid you not. And there are plenty more just like them throughout the movie. After that, the fact that the script also takes the established mythologies of werewolves, Frankenstein's monster, and vampires and alters them in ways I'd almost consider blasphemous, ensures that the film is not only bad, but also offensive to fans of these horror creatures.

If you're a special effects nut, buy a ticket to Van Helsing so you can see some state-of-the-art work. If you love good set design, take a peek at Van Helsing's because I've rarely seen better. But if you're looking for a good horror movie, a good vampire flick, or a story to divert you for a couple of hours, I suggest you rent something. In fact, the scariest thing about Van Helsing is that its said a sequel is already in the works.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: Van Helsing is rated PG-13 for "non-stop creature action violence, frightening images, and some sensuality." As a whole, this rating is just about right: too scary for little ones and not scary enough for adults.