Fun action, but lacking in any true sense of horror

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 2004)

Pop culture likes to emphasize that `this is not your father's (insert radio/TV/personal pastime here).' Well, such is the case with Van Helsing, the new horror/action thriller, starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale. Based on the character who so valiantly fights Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's original novel, and who has been reincarnated on the screen by everyone from Edward Van Sloan (1931) to Peter Cushing (1958) to Sir Laurence Olivier (1979) to Sir Anthony Hopkins (1992), Jackman is hardly the Victorian Era drawing room intellectual who battles evil using crosses, wooden stakes and cloves of garlic so frequently resurrected for the screen. And that is to both the film's good and detriment. Jackman's Van Helsing, a black leather-clad, fedora-sporting adventurer, is employed by the Vatican to battle the world's monsters and evils. Like some 19th century James Bond, he carries an arsenal of advanced weaponry (i.e., a crossbow that shoots a rapid-fire succession of arrows), all devised by his own `Q', a bookish friar named Carl who also serves as his sidekick. When first we meet Van Helsing, he is confronting the belligerent and murderous Mr. Edward Hyde, a bellicose, cigar-smoking giant, who has completely taken over the body of the kindly Dr. Henry Jekyll. The two battle inside a French cathedral (it's not clear if it is Notre Dame), with the end result being Hyde/Jekyll killed, and a centuries old stained glass window shattered. Such results are typical of this Van Helsing's battles, which has him in disfavor with his superiors in Vatican City, despite his success at curbing the world's monster population. Following his exploits in Paris, Van Helsing is sent to Transylvania, where it is learned Count Dracula is close to exterminating the Valeriouses, a wealthy family with close ties to the Vatican. There, Van Helsing uncovers a plot by the Count and his fiendish brides to unleash thousands of vampires upon the world, brought to life through the electrical charge Dr. Frankenstein found in lightning and used to create his monster (the Count, in fact, needs the Monster to carry out his plan). Standing in the Count's way, alongside Van Helsing, is the beautiful and resourceful Anna Valerious (Beckinsale) and her brother Velkan, who has been cursed as a werewolf. You see, in the story as devised by writer-director Stephen Sommers, a werewolf can kill a vampire, although they typically don't because they are usually under the vampire's power. This is the first time that Van Helsing, a character privy until now only
to Dracula, has become involved with the big three, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman. He has a new first name; Gabriel, not Abraham. And, as personified by Jackman, he is far sexier than Van Sloan's myopic crusader, or Olivier's Dutch accent challenged vampire slayer. Truth be told, Jackman's Van Helsing is far more warrior than professor, acrobatically waging war against the Count and his minions, while leaving to others the deciphering of any riddles connected to Dracula's scheme. This Van Helsing is a man of action, not the mind, a major departure from the character as envisioned by Stoker. To give him a new look and history seems so apropos in this day and age of `extreme makeover', but, so much is accomplished through f/x and CG, there is a human element that is lost. Sommers makes a vain attempt to humanize Van Helsing with a back story that makes his mission to destroy Dracula a personal one, but mostly, in Sommers vision, Van Helsing loses his connection to the audience, and instead becomes just another super-hero swallowed up by stunts. Van Helsing is a fun thrill ride that carries a touch of nostalgia (specifically, a superb black and white salute to the Universal horror film of the 1930s), but which never reaches in to illuminate the soul of the character or cast a true shadow of horror on the audience.