Dracula Meets the Wolverine

Rating: 7/10 (10 July 2018)

Despite being thinly scripted in parts, overly plotted in others, and CGI bloated, "Van Helsing" might be the best monster-rally movie since the original Universal series, from its initial crossover feature, "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (1943), to its turn into self-parody beginning with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948)--although my favorite may be Columbia's "The Return of the Vampire (1943), which, akin to "Van Helsing," is a Dracula Meets Wolf Man monster rally in all but name. Albeit, being the best monster-rally fare since the 1940s or so, which has included the kiddie "The Monster Squad" (1987), the prior-year's summer blockbuster, "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (2003), and a host of B-to-Z-grade pictures, is not a high bar to surpass. In retrospect, "Van Helsing" also plays a bit like a warm up to Universal's subsequent attempts to launch a new Dark Universe, that being "Dracula Untold" (2014) and "The Mummy" (2017), except that the warm up is actually better than the latter results.
À la "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," Dracula has an evil plan for Frankenstein's monster, but, once again, werewolves (and, it could be argued, some other dimwits) are trying to thwart him. In an homage to the classic Universal horror films, the opening sequence of "Van Helsing" is in black and white and rehashes Dr. Frankenstein's creation of the monster, complete with a pitchfork mob chasing them to a fiery climax in a windmill. For a while, "Van Helsing" seems rather haphazard in its touching upon other classic monsters, including scenes of Van Helsing fighting Mr. Hyde (who is more like a mix of The Hunchback of Notre Dame--literally that's his location--and, as in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," a weak version of Marvel's the Hulk rather than the character from Stevenson's novella), of some werewolf hunters and of a small village being terrorized by vampires. There's also some stuff with Igor, a gravedigger, vampire brides and baby vampire bats. Probably the biggest problem with the movie is that it spends time with too much clutter while not delving too deep into the characters and storylines that really count.
Van Helsing merely retains the name of Stoker's character. Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing is no Dutch doctor, but rather an 1880s James Bond type working for Vatican as a hitman of monsters. The friar Carl stands in for the "Q" character from the Bond films, as he shows Van Helsing the latest in fictional-Victorian-era weapons technology. Strangely, Carl is also more like Stoker's Van Helsing than the actual character by that name in this movie, as he's the one with all of the answers and knowledge related to vampire hunting. Jackman's Van Helsing, on the other hand, at first, wonders why he can't just shoot the Count with his guns. Like Jackman's Wolverine from the X-Men movie series, his Van Helsing is a semi-immortal with memory loss who recklessly rushes into a fight, relies upon the intelligence of others, whether it be a Carl or Charles Xavier, struggles with the risks between heroism and evil capable from his rage-infused superpowers and with the tragic possibilities of his romantic relationship with a female sidekick, whether it be Anna Valerious or Jean Grey.
As for this movie's Dracula, I'm fairly satisfied with it. I've been watching a bunch of Dracula-related films since reading the novel, and I'm tired of all of the weak or otherwise lovesick bastardizations of Stoker's titular villain. Stoker's Dracula was pure evil. In the 1931 Universal version, Bela Lugosi added camp to the role. At least, Richard Roxburgh's Dracula evokes some of Stoker and Lugosi's traditions, and he's an especially strong vampire. Whereas Van Helsing is a rehash of Wolverine, I can see a bit of the absurdity of Roxburgh's Duke from "Moulin Rouge!"--which along with the absinthe in the windmill and the visual excess, "Moulin Rouge!" seems to have especially influenced this movie. Mixed with the goofiness throughout from director Stephen Sommers, who had already done likewise in rebooting "The Mummy" series, this one can be fun. The Frankenstein monster, on the other hand, was somewhat of a sympathetic character even in Shelley's book, but he's overly such here. No explanation is given for his eloquent speech, either; even the classic Universal movies, for as much as they departed from the source material, addressed his acquisition of language.
The visual effects are well integrated with the the framing and its movement--what is traditionally done with the camera, but which is increasingly being done by computers. Only a few years later than "Van Helsing," five movies that relied heavily upon computers for their imagery, "camera" movement and lighting were seemingly-oxymoronically awarded Oscars for Best Cinematography: "Avatar" (2009), "Inception" (2010), "Hugo" (2011), "Life of Pi" (2012) and "Gravity" (2013). "Van Helsing" is part of a prior generation of combining live action and CGI and camera and digital photography, but at least the "camera" moves some, including following Dracula as he walks up walls (much more casually than the wall crawler of Stoker, by the way) or keeping abreast of the vampires flying in their humanoid-bat forms. Such a sense of the role of the camera in the mix of live action and CGI was lacking from the prior year's monster rally, "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," so "Van Helsing" was certainly an improvement upon that, delivering an action movie that's actually visually enthralling.
(Mirror Note: Dracula displays his and other vampires' lack of reflections to Anna as he dances with her before a mirror in a vampire ball sequence that somewhat recalls a similar scene in Roman Polanski's "Dance of the Vampires," a.k.a. "The Fearless Vampire Hunters" (1967). A mirror is also used in another scene as a gateway.)