Time: 131 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Violence & horror
Cast:
Hugh Jackman as Gabriel Van Helsing
Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious
Richard Roxburgh as Count Vladislaus Dracula
David Wenham as Carl
Shuler Hensley as Frankenstein’s monster
Kevin J. O’Connor as Igor
Will Kemp as Velkan Valerious
Director: Stephen Sommers

I went into Van Helsing not expecting much with the mixed to negative reviews, but I was somewhat curious about it. It’s not really a good movie, however, I did enjoy parts of it.

There’s an element of campiness to the movie that helps to make it occasionally entertaining.  However, it’s just not enough to sustain the film. The script at its centre is rather generic and isn’t anything special, with a thin and dull plot, and doesn’t even do much with the setting or the classic universal monsters characters and aspects. It’s also pretty long at around 2 hours and 10 minutes, and was badly paced across this runtime.

Van Helsing has a good cast, but most of the actors aren’t utilised the best. I like Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale, but this is far from their best work. They are stuck working with generic writing and end up delivering dull performances. Some actors get to ham it up however, David Wenham delivers the comic relief as Van Helsing’s sidekick. The highlight of the cast is Richard Roxburgh, who plays Dracula. While he’s not the best portrayal of the character by any means, he’s actually allowed to embrace the camp and cheesiness. He chews the scenery in such an enjoyable way, and works for this movie’s take on the character.

Stephen Sommers clearly knows how to make a blockbuster when looking at his Mummy movies. Unfortunately Van Helsing, isn’t on the level of either of those, even if it does have some appealing elements. I liked the gothic aesthetic, which is clearly inspired by Universal Monsters. There is some solid production design with castles and laboratories, and occasionally some good practical effects. The over the top action sequences are also fun to watch. However, it really is held back by the ridiculously awful effects, with the CGI monsters looking cartoonish and ruining any kind of horror elements they were going for. Somehow, they feel more glaringly aged than anything in the Mummy movies made years earlier.

Van Helsing is a really dated, overlong and goofy flick, that’s occasionally fun with some over the top action and hammy performances.