Movie Reviews

There are some really cool ideas in Van Helsing, but it's unfortunately that they're wrapped up into an otherwise uninteresting monster/action-movie.

I'll start with the good stuff. The beginning of the film is very well done -- it's a black-and-white homage to dozens of other old monster B-movies, filmed with style and appreciation for the old movies it rips off. I even liked the slightly hokey introduction of the character Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) -- a 'monster bounty hunter' who confronts and kills the monstrous 'Mr. Hyde' persona of Dr. Jekyll (the goofiness of this sequence should clue most viewers into the fact that the film is really attempting to parody a lot of these monsters, and it shouldn't be taken very seriously. If someone were to regard the film as a serious monster movie, they'd probably really hate it). The introduction offers a satisfying manner in which the characters of Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and the werewolf connect with one another. And most of all, I really liked the character of Frankenstein's monster, in terms of his actual characterization and especially in terms of his visualization by the filmmakers and special effects/makeup people.

The rest of the film isn't so hot. The Van Helsing character is basically a gothic James Bond, complete with both an MI-6 and Q equivalent. I suppose maybe this could've provided for some cool ideas, but none were to be found (even the important new gadget that Van Helsing's "Q" presents at the beginning of the film announces itself as painfully obvious how it's going to be used later on in the film). The plot of the film is really dull, involving Dracula's attempt to use Dr. Frankenstein's machinery to bring his thousands of dead children to life. And the climactic battle involved so much mediocre CG work that it looked a lot like a video game.

Van Helsing wasn't a terrible movie, but it's unfortunate that it's few good ideas got swallowed up among a bunch not-so-good ideas.