Elements of Good, Execution Completely Lacking

Rating: 2/10 (4 July 2009)

I am probably different from many in that my first exposure to Van Helsing was in the animation The London Assignment. It was a steal, so I picked it up and gave it a watch, with low expectations. But I found myself interested, so I thought I would finally watch the film that spawned the animated prequel.
It is rather astonishing to me, actually, how a 30-minute tie-in prequel could be so many leagues superior to its big-budget Hollywood source material, especially when there is so much rich material to draw from. Then again, that may have been the chiefest problem: whereas The London Assignment focused solely on a single adversary, the film tries to incorporate so many things and so many moments of homage that it never finds a focus.
The first and most inexcusable aspect is that none of the protagonists are even remotely sympathetic or enjoyable, and no real effort is made to convince the viewer that their plight is good, just, or correct. When the inevitable betrayal comes later, it is not unexpected, but it also fails to carry any emotional weight whatsoever. There is really no effort put into a setup or premise, which makes the film's narrative extremely weak. If the viewers don't care anything about the supposed heroes, why should they care if they fall into danger? The mindset of 'monsters are evil and should be destroyed' was weak in the 50s, that golden age of monsters and aliens in film, and it certainly has not weathered the half-century after. Just as Van Helsing and his crew are not sufficiently heroic or sympathetic, Dracula and his are not sufficiently villainous or unsympathetic. If anything, because of the willful ignorance and hatefulness of the villagers, the Frankenstein Monster makes a compelling argument against the supposed 'heroes'...which is another moment where the film falls flat when it is supposed to have a more emotional impact.
When the heroes meet with hardship, why should we care? They have already caused great torment and sadness for the supposed villains, and for no legitimate or justified reason. It also rather presumptuously sets forth that this bizarre melange of beliefs promoted by the 'holy knights' in the Vatican are entirely true and right, which is a bit much to take for granted, especially with a diverse audience.
Honestly, few of the performances are bad in this film. This is a fantastic cast, and Hugh Jackman does the best with his very weakly-written role. It doesn't hurt that he's particularly nice to look at, but good looks and acting talent cannot help a disastrously poor script and questionable direction; it has been mentioned before, and accurately, that Van Helsing is essentially a series of action sequences barely strung together by the faintest hints of plot.
The characters should have been more defined, and then we might have a reason to care about them, or at least to be concerned if one will survive the current encounter. With a running time of over two hours total, many superfluous and needless scenes could have been eschewed in favor of some modicum of character development. That this is the same man responsible for the generally enjoyable Mummy revival series is shocking to me, since those films were such a considerable step up from Van Helsing.
CG special effects were also, as elsewhere noted, grossly abused in this. While they were quite good, they were overused and made the whole affair look too dependent upon the effects, rather than the proceedings being augmented by them. Any longtime horror aficionado will tell you, it isn't the effects, it's the atmosphere. And even though Van Helsing was not really a horror film -- more an action movie with Gothic horror elements -- it lacked on so many counts, ambiance included.
Essentially it was as if someone had thrown a bunch of well-known features of well-known horror or supernatural figures and roughly blended them to create a film. The plot only moved by grace of the script, not through logical progression or narrative development, and it constantly contradicted itself. The characters were bland at best, despicable at worse...and those were the heroes. The villains at least had centuries of literary heritage behind them. But the heroes were unsympathetic automatons, spewing rhetoric that was clear the actors did not share in conviction. Still, the antagonists were not nearly convincing enough in their opposition and managed to make little impression themselves.
All in all, this was a work of wasted potential. Too many irons in the fire made this a chaotic mess that rarely made any sense and never managed to be as compelling as it should have been. How is it possible that a 30-minute animated video tie-in got it right, but the 2-hour-plus Hollywood blockbuster fumbled it so badly? If you really want to give this concept a try, watch The London Assignment and give this a skip. It's just not worth losing two hours of your life that you will never get back. There are so many more deserving films out there.