Good God! Run for your lives!

Rating: 4/10 (4 November 2004)

Van Helsing promises a fun ride. The premise of a 19th century
monster hunter fighting against Dracula has some silly potential.
But Van Helsing fails to deliver.
This movie has no brain and no soul. Like the slavering, leaping
CGI beasts Van Helsing fights endlessly, the movie possess no
wit, no point, and not even any interesting fight scenes. Van
Helsing abandoned an interesting plot, good acting, and quality
dialogue in favor of a shambling mess of explosions, undead
vampire babies and shiny-cool weapons. The movie is a frightening study of excess, 100% pure, shallow spectacle with
nothing underneath. Van Helsing doesn't only fight Dracula, but
Frankenstein's Monster and Werewolves and Mr. Hyde and
Vampire Brides and Igor and thousands of mini-vampires and
dozens of mechanical gnome creatures and angry translyvanian
peasants to boot! Lighting shooting through the Monster will bring
Dracula's brood to life! Werewolves can slay Dracula, but he uses
them as minions! Dracula's lives in an ice-castle, but uses a
magic portrait to come to Translyvania! Van Helsing is trapped by
hundreds of vampire minions, fortunately he has a device that can
DUPLICATE THE POWER OF THE SUN!
Sommers throws every video-game gimmick he can think of into
Van Helsing, but neglects the things that actually make a movie
good, like a plot, a script, and good characters. So we end up with
cardboard cutout Van Helsing running around with "romantic
interest" Valerious and "Quirky funny guy" Carl, battling endless
monsters and searching desperately for a point.
The only scary thing about the flick is that hundreds of millions of
dollars were spent and the train wreck that is Van Helsing was the
result.