Just atrocious.

Rating: 2/10 (29 October 2018)

This has to one of the most colossal, audience insulting messes of all time, worse, even, than Transformers 4 in that regard.
Stephen Sommers follows up his spectacular job on the Mummy with a movie that looked so damn good on paper, but... well, let's try balance, the good stuff...
The opening feels pretty darn good, the black and white intro the frankenstein story. Sure, it's not up to the ancient Hamunaptra intro from the Mummy, but it does a good job and the actors involved sell this oh so well. We move on to Robbie Coltrane voicing Mr hyde, and whilst the Hyde CGI is pretty poor, Coltrane does a great job voicing the villain.
After that, we're getting a little vaguer, but... Roxburgh was genius casting as Dracula, after his scene-mastication in Moulin Rouge, this was slightly more subdued, but still oh-so effective and then there were the brides, both in their cgi and *ahem* more fleshy forms they gave the movie a little... something.
Now, the bad. Beckinsale is about as charismatic as a bag of carrots although she does prove consistently good at running in heels. I don;t know exactly what that says about her, but when it came down to any confrontation between her and the brides (especially Aleera), for the only time in my life I was on Team Vampire.
Jackman was fair, but largely felt like he was on autopilot, he needs something meatier to draw a performance from than 'moody vampire-hunter'. he wasn't terrible, it's just that he could have been anybody right here.
Now the plot... I'm quite happy to suspend my disbelief a little for a movie, especially one about monsters, steampunk science and magic, but this was exceptionally dumb and the plot had holes big enough that you could easily fit in castles, Dracula, Frankenstein, Argh and Disney, with adequate space for a shopping mall with plenty of parking, a football stadium and an expansive amusement park based on the theme of 'dumb ideas'. We're somehow expected to believe that travel in one direction takes days, whilst going the other way takes hours, or that a portcullis that drops to water level will somehow prevent humans passing through a passage of water deep enough to allow a boat to pass through. Sorry, this is just dumb.
Then there are the toxic ewoks, the randomly awful gravedigger, the vampires who are considered darn-near all-powerful but unable to kill someone who's primary skill seems to be running away, yet without the skill and determination of Rincewind and the sheer awfulness of... well, most of it.
Sorry, I tried to like it at release. I even tried to rehabilitate it a couple of years later when my wife went through her Hugh Jackman phase. So, when I chose it randomly in the run up to Halloween this year I figured 'one last chance'. I was right. Last chance. I like the Mummy. I like the Mummy Returns. I'll even sit through the Dragon Emperor, but this movie just fails on so many levels. Bad acting, bad CGI, lazy directing, too many things walking on walls for no reason and that awful werwolf transformation.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. No. I can look at things with a fun eye and a critical eye, but both of them were appalled by what they saw here.