A noisy effects show lacking tension, excitement or even fun; but then I guess some sections of the audience love that sort of thing

Rating: Null/10 (27 March 2005)

Under the direction of the church, famed monster hunter Van Helsing is sent to Transylvania to protect the remaining Valerious family and assist in their battle against the forces of evil in the country. Once there he discovers that only one member of the family remains alive; luckily for Helsing though it is the gorgeous Anna, who fights monsters with a sexy sneer and a pair of rather tight trousers. Never having fought a vampire before, Helsing soon finds himself fighting the original Dracula, who has a sinister plan involving the use of a werewolves and the late Dr Frankenstein's research into tissue reanimation to achieve his aim  but can he be stopped before it is too late? About six months or more before this film came out in the UK, film magazines were salivating over the cool posters featuring Jackman posing in a long coat against a Gothic, shadowy background; as usual hyping an unseen product. However immune I would like to think I am to hype I was quite taken in by it and starting to look forward to the film but, approaching release and having seen clips from it, I decided it wasn't something I would bother with and decided to put it off until I could get it in my own house without any effort. So it was that a cold evening after a tiring day at work saw me settling down to veg out in front of this film, assuming that it would give my brain no problem at all. I was right in this regard but I had really hoped that the film would not be the noisy effects show without atmosphere or tension that so many critics had claimed but sadly I found out that they were right. The story is less a narrative and more just a collection of set pieces and I never really got into the story and the attempts at subplots (such as Helsings past) just came over as filler rather than stuff I cared about.
Another reviewer said that this is clearly a Steven Sommers and that that is no bad thing and, although I agree with the former, he is wrong about the latter because this is at best, an average thing thanks to Sommers. I guess if The Mummy and its sequel are your idea of wonderful films then this will probably do you but for me the action (and story) was just messy and lacking anything of interest or any style that was imaginative; the rule of thumb seems to be when you have a quiet minute in the film then just make some more stuff fall down/go on fire/explode etc. This approach robs the film of atmosphere, genuine tension and genuine excitement at almost every turns. The occasional jump due to things moving suddenly are lazy and easy and don't make up for a real good product with depth. As a cinema fan I did think it was a nice idea to pay homage to the Universal monsters but this was not the way to do it as not of them are really done justice. As with many Sommers summer blockbusters, the effects are always good but never seen to fit in with the real action, by which I mean they always look like, well, effects  again taking away from the excitement of the film because I can get into it when it seems so very artificial. Delivering a good atmosphere would have helped but Sommers is rather one-note and he cannot do this at all.
The cast swagger around the best they can, striking poses and jumping around the best they can without really having depth or character to work with. They seem to have been left to work it out for themselves and, as with much of the "real" stuff in the film, they don't convincingly fit in with the effects. Neither do they convince on the action front, but that is less their fault than the fault of the action that requires them to be thrown around like rag dolls with no consequences. Jackman is a good leading man but he cannot do it without help and here he has no script, director or anything to help him  he is cool and has presence but that is all. Beckinsale has a nice body  and by noticing that I am only doing what the film wanted me to do with her performance, use it as teenage boy fodder; she has no character and I saw close-ups of her bum in tight trousers more often than I saw anything approaching a performance. Wenham provides by-the-numbers comic relief but Roxburgh's Dracula is poor even if his "brides" are good looking. Of the monsters the only one to make an impression was Frankenstein's monster, who was interesting and not just the roaring effect that the others were.
Overall this is noisy, has lots of rather soulless special effects, an uninteresting plot and characters, attractive women and quipping heroes; for many this is all they seem to demand during summer months to pass as entertainment but I couldn't help feel that, amongst all the noise and sweeping sets that someone had forgotten to produce the fun and excitement to go along with it.