Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 7, 2004, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Stephen Sommers likes to start his movies off with a bang, and the Mummy writer/director’s latest classic-monster reinvention, Van Helsing, is no different. It actually begins with lots of bangs—thunder and explosions and bashings—in a prologue so big, it could be the climax of another movie. And in fact, it is: It’s a scaled-up reworking of the final scenes of the original Frankenstein (1931), complete with black-and-white photography, torch-wielding villagers and a burning windmill. Sommers has clearly studied his classic cinematic predecessors, but only in a cursory manner; once the story proper gets under way and the image goes to color, any hint of their spooky, measured style goes out the window. Van Helsing quickly becomes a movie composed of nothing but climaxes, another vehicle in Sommers’ caravan of wretched excess: two hours of special FX and noise, without a shred of wit or mystery.
I hope I don’t come off like a curmudgeon, because I love a great big eye-popping genre spectacle as much as anyone—as long as there’s some sort of feeling behind it. In Van Helsing, though, only the next sensation matters, with no apparent feeling for how or why the audience might be emotionally invested in it. And sure, the movie’s great to look at, with lush photography by Allen Daviau and extravagant sets by production designer Allan Cameron, but I’m past the point of cutting expensive movies slack just for looking good; at $150 million, Van Helsing had better be spectacular. It’s what the filmmaker does with the resources at his command that matters, and Sommers falls down flat with the least expensive factor of all: the screenplay.
The idea of recasting the heroic Van Helsing from an elderly professor to a dashing man of adventure is rife with possibilities, and Hugh Jackman is certainly the right actor for the role. Too bad he’s given so little to play here. We’re constantly told what a conflicted, tragic guy he is, but we never see it, and Jackman, who oozed brooding charisma in the X-Men movies (and hell, even in the dreadful Swordfish) seems flat and uninspired. It’s only appropriate, then, that he faces off against a Dracula who feels equally defanged; as played by Richard Roxburgh, the Count comes off more like a perpetually annoyed dilettante than an all-powerful lord of the night. Equally disappointing is Frankenstein’s Monster (Shuler Hensley), who lacks the tragic, childlike qualities of Boris Karloff or the menacing calculation of Robert De Niro. He’s supposedly put together from the bodies of seven men, but has the personality of none; he’s just a chatty, ugly guy who serves mostly as a font of exposition in a movie that hardly needs more of it.
The plot that brings these characters together proceeds as if derived from a first draft that was written in sequence without an outline, and that no one at the studio bothered to ask Sommers to rewrite. It lurches from one overscaled setpiece to another with a minimum of dialogue in between (which may be just as well given the hokeyness of the lines), and without any feeling for narrative development or coherence. Sequences are thrown in apparently just because they seemed like cool ideas, regardless of whether they make sense in context or drive the story forward, and Sommers frequently writes himself into a corner and then extricates himself in contrived fashion. I suppose I should preface the rest of this paragraph with a SPOILER ALERT, but if despite my warning you still see Van Helsing, ask yourself during the carriage chase: How did the other carriage get over the gorge? How come the vampire brides didn’t spot it? Who decided to build a road that runs right along the edge of a sheer cliff? And why does the carriage explode into flames when the Wolf Man leaps onto it?
These questions would be moot, of course, if Van Helsing was fun or exciting enough to forestall issues of plausibility at least until you’re on your way home from the theater. But for all its blood and thunder and CGI beasties (which are certainly well-done on a technical level, but lack that extra magic that would make them seem truly alive), the movie becomes a drag by the halfway point. Particularly groan-worthy are all the anachronistic one-liners given David Wenham (playing Van Helsing’s weapons supplier/sidekick), as if young audiences today can’t be trusted to follow a period adventure without such a “hip, modern” touch. Sommers might have done well to devote less attention to these atmosphere-breakers and more to whether his story and characters made sense; as it is, half the dramatic developments come completely out of left field, and the explanation of Van Helsing’s backstory is so muddled that it remains unclear even after reams of last-act dialogue have been devoted to it.
Among the few genuinely effective elements of Van Helsing are the lengthy end titles designed by Kaleidoscope Inc.; they’re creepy and atmospheric in a way the overwrought feature preceding them is not. There is, however, one final disclaimer that many classic creature buffs will feel is missing: Any resemblance between these characters and those created by Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker is purely coincidental.
