kind of a mess

Rating: 5/10 (5 November 2018)

There are some interesting takes on the vampire legend in this movie, but unfortunately they are buried beneath confusing plot twists, problems with tone, and a script that is about 30 minutes too long. The movie features Hugh Jackman as the legendary vampire hunter Van Helsing, but a quasi-immortal version of Helsing that can't remember his past except in flashes of nightmares. Kate Beckinsale plays Anna Valerious, an action hero in her own right whose family has a history with Dracula.
Also making appearances in the film are Dr. Jeckle/Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein and his creation, and the Wolf man. The plot revolves around a confusing scheme by Dracula to harvest the science of Frankenstein to become a baby daddy and Van Helsing attempting to release Anna's ancestors into heaven, and also werewolves for whatever reason. There's also a separate plot teased about how Van Helsing was somehow responsible for creating Dracula, although as far as I can tell a few allusions is all the movie delivers, perhaps because they expected to get sequels that never materialized.
My biggest problem with the movie is tone. For the first 30 minutes I literally couldn't tell if the movie was supposed to be a horror thriller or a slapstick parody. Dramatic scenes will be suddenly put on hold while characters crack jokes with a wink to the audience before picking right back up with drama. I think this was a conscious choice, kind of like they want to say "hey we get it, this is silly stuff." But instead of coming off as hip, it mostly just serves to drain any dramatic tension they were building.
The other issue is time. Good lord this is a long film for a horror movie. The extra length is used to add several additional meaningless battles in the middle of the movie that just go nowhere. They could have clipped Anna's brother out completely and just brought Van Helsing to his battle with Dracula sooner and the movie would have flowed so much better.
In the end, I felt like there were some interesting moments here, but I was too frustrated waiting for them to get to the movie's climax to appreciate them. Instead I just felt like I must have missed a previous movie that explained all of the backstory the characters referenced in this film but never explained.