Van Helsing: Does it Hold Up?

So here we go, another trip down memory lane, but this time with a movie I actually got to see in theaters.  “Van Helsing” was a 2004 joint effort from Universal Studios and Stephen Sommers to breathe life into the classic Universal monsters while also capitalizing on the buzz generated by “The Mummy” and Hugh Jackman’s rising fame thanks to his work as Wolverine in the “X-Men” film franchise.

Sommers was the guy behind the first reboot of “The Mummy” back in 1999 and by golly it shows because his fingerprints are all over this flick.  Van Helsing came out with the intention of creating an action filled rollercoaster ride featuring our favorite film monsters including Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman and having them fight “not Wolverine”.  To expound on that last part, Jackman leads this cast as Gabriel Van Helsing, an amnesiac immortal who fights monsters in the hopes that the clandestine organization he’s associated himself with can help get his memories back, which is totally not a riff on Wolverine, an amnesiac immortal who fights evil mutants in the hopes that the clandestine organization he’s associated himself with can help get his memories back.  See, they are completely different.  One has anger issues and claws and the other doesn’t have claws.

The film opens with a black and white re-imagining of one of the more famous classic monster movies, Frankenstein, complete with “Its ALIVE!!!” line only to have it bleed into color and show that Dracula has been secretly funding Dr. Frankenstein’s work for the purpose of creating “the monster”.  Things go off the rails shortly after that and the monster is presumed dead.

We then meet our titular hero with Van Helsing tracking Mr. Hyde through Paris because apparently he’s also Jack the Ripper, I think.  They never make that clear.  Hyde is brought to “life” as a completely CGI character and…we’ll get back to this.

So our love interest in the film is Anna played by Kate Beckensale with a Transylvanian accent so thick and so bad that it just distracts you from what her dialog actually is.  Anna is trying to fend off her village from regular attacks from “The Brides”, Dracula’s three consorts who morph from dangerously attractive women to pasty winged demons.  

Van Helsing shows up and lends a hand, sent there by the “The Church” with his Caddy, Friar Carl…who is by far the most effective character in the whole movie, to put a stop to Dracula’s shenanigans.  Van Helsing wastes one of the brides, Marishka, saving Anna.  Anna, as it turns out, is the last of a bloodline and must kill Dracula so their ancestors can enter Heaven.  Don’t look at me, I didn’t write this.

He saves Anna and because she’s bound and determine to get herself killed before act three he knocks her out.  When she comes to she encounters her brother Velkan, who she thought was killed in an attempt to trap and kill the Wolfman.  Velkan tries warning her about Dracula’s plan but guess what, he’s the new Wolfman and the minute he sees the full moon he transforms and tries to kill her.

Van Helsing and Anna track the Wolfman back to Frankenstein’s Castle where they discover that Dracula is trying to bring to life an army of vampire gremlins by using Velkan as a battery.  It doesn’t work and the little monsters that started to come to life end up dying, much to the dismay of Dracula and his brides.  Van Helsing and Anna are chased by the Wolfman and escape to the remains of an old windmill.  There they meet Frankenstein’s monster but because he’s not “evil” Van Helsing can’t kill him and so decides to help him.  This is all witnessed by the Wolfman who reports his info back to Dracula.  As it turns out, Franky was the battery Drac has been looking for.

Carl, back at Anna’s pad, discovers a painting that comes to life, depicting a werewolf and a vampire battling. 

Still the most effective character.

The group travels by carriage to Budapest, luring the remaining brides into a trap and killing Verona. The Wolfman ambushes the real carriage and bites Van Helsing before being killed. Anna is captured and held as a bargaining chip in exchange for Frankenstein's monster. They hide him in a crypt, but he is taken by the count's undead underlings while Van Helsing and Carl rescue Anna. Returning to the Valerious' castle, Carl discovers an inscription and creates a doorway to the castle. After failing to free Frankenstein's monster from his imprisonment, he lets them know of a cure to lycanthropy that Dracula possesses. Carl determines that the bite of the Wolf Man is the only way to kill Dracula. He and Anna take Igor to find the cure while Van Helsing goes to free Frankenstein's monster. Igor escapes while the final bride, Aleera, assaults Anna as Carl tries delivering the cure to Van Helsing. Igor confronts Carl on a bridge, but the confrontation sends Igor falling to his demise. Frankenstein's monster saves Anna and urges her to help Carl and Van Helsing. She kills Aleera and arrives at the castle. As the new Wolfman, Van Helsing and Dracula battle. Dracula tries reasoning with Van Helsing but he bites Dracula, who dissolves into a skeleton. Anna bursts in, causing her to be attacked and accidentally killed by Van Helsing, but not before she delivers the cure. Van Helsing returns to normal, stricken with grief over what he has done.

At a funeral pyre, Van Helsing witnesses the spirits of Anna and her family ascending into the clouds while Frankenstein's monster rows away on a raft out to sea. Van Helsing and Carl ride off into the sunset.

This movie was all over the place.  Stephen Sommers does great action and when he blends horror into the mix he does so without sacrificing the swashbuckling adventure angle.  This movie was jam packed with characters and creatures and I can’t say that this was a good thing.  I grew up watching the classic monsters, even in to their shared cinematic universe and into the Abbot and Costello days so to have all these big guns back on the screen together, and not in “Monster Squad” was a big draw for me.  But there is a balancing issue with this piece where while everyone got time on screen, you don’t feel like their characters were each given their due.

Richard Roxburgh devours scenes as Dracula and does so with shameless glee in his over acting and, weird as it sounds, it works for this movie.  You are 100% sold that this Dracula is not faking a damn thing and it’s kind of a silly beautiful thing to watch.

Beckensale as Anna was, I think, a weak point in the film.  She had recently come off “Underworld” and she was clearly going to for the same tone everyone else was trying to strike in the film but I don’t think she quite made it to the top of that tree.  She seemed just a little left of center of the rest of the film universe around her.  There wasn't any real chemistry between Anna and Van Helsing so this was a certainly a case of "Forced Love Interest".

David Wenham as Friar Carl sold it, and he was a treat.  He was goofy, silly, but actually functional within the story itself.  His job was to hand Van Helsing the next deadly object he needed to kill the monster, and he did his damn job so well that you forgot that this was literally the only thing he was responsible for.

One character barely mentioned in the write up of the plot was Igor played by Kevin J. O’Conner who you may remember from the 1999 “Mummy” movie as the ill-fated resident rat Benny.  Here he is the ill-fated resident rat Igor and for all the moments he has in the movie has actually little to do with the plot.  He could be completely removed from the movie and it wouldn’t change anything.  

The makeup effects they did for Igor were less “Hunchback” and more “Radu from Subspecies’ less impressive cousin.”  I might get to Subspecies one day, but I promise nothing.

Speaking of effects, and I told you I’d get back to this, let’s talk about 2004’s attempts at fully CGI characters.  This time around we had Mr. Hyde, all three versions of the Wolfman, Dracula and his bride’s monster forms, and the vampire gremlin babies.

Mr. Hyde looks like a pink Shrek.  His character does not feel like it’s in the same world as Van Helsing is, and that takes you out of the action.  Seeing that on screen and knowing that one of my personal favorites, the Wolfman, was also fully CGI made me very nervous from the get go.  This was compounded because the last time I saw a fully CGI werewolf on the big screen was in 1997’s “An American Werewolf in Paris” and that looked like garbage.

Dracula and his brides didn’t fare much better, but I will say that when the brides were flying around the village early in the film under thick cloud cover, they actually didn’t look too bad.  They weren’t great, but better than Hyde.

The Wolfmen.  Oh the Wolfmen.  Okay, they weren’t terrible.  You were very aware you were looking at a CGI character, but it was clear the team tried on this one.  Each Wolfman looked unique and you could tell that some effort was put into this character.  The result, again, not great, but better than I thought it was going to be.

The vampire gremlins looked fine.

I think my problem with the movie is it’s over reliance on CGI.  The practical effects they did use in the film looked amazing but I can certainly see why they would want to find a happy medium.  If everything they used CGI for was done practically, the budget would have been astronomical.

So does it hold up?  Well, yeah if you go into it with the right mindset.  If you approach this movie as a fun adventure ride, then you are going to have a good time.  The movie feels more like a video game, with levels and boss battles culminating in a final big boss battle in a level you have to solve a puzzle to get into.  There are gadgets and side characters and quests and my friends and I consider it very much an unofficial Castlevania movie, to the point that we sometimes refer to it as “Belmont” because it would just make more sense in that vein.  

It’s certainly a lot better than anything Universal’s “Dark Universe” as crapped out lately.

Thanks for reading.