What a waste of potential

Rating: 4/10 (22 August 2017)

In light of Universal's lukewarm attempt at kicking start their planned Dark Universe earlier this summer with the underwhelming The Mummy reboot, I was suddenly reminded of Van Helsing, the supposed big budget summer season starter of 2004 for which the studio must have carried similar hopes, but ended up way short.
With the Mummy reboot, one could lay blame chiefly on the chaotic script which was beyond salvageable, not to mention Mr. Cruise himself allegedly spent months in the editing room after principal shooting. Cruise also brought his long time collaborator, Mission:Impossible writer/director Christopher McQuarrie to help with the script during development. Yet with a script like that, there was not much veteran playwright but first time blockbuster director Kurtzmann could do. With Van Helsing, it becomes harder to throw blames around.
Do you blame the incoherent and totally predictable mess of a plot to the badly written script? I suppose you could. Do you blame the million or so clichés and bad dialogue on the script, too? I suppose you could. Do you blame the absolutely horrible, laughably bad fake Eastern European accents uttered by Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxborough (just about the least menacing or scary villain they could have come up with), and David Wenham (whose sidekick character is the antithesis of funny) and over the top dramatic acting on the director? Again, I suppose you could. Since the film is written and directed by the same person, riding on the success of the two Mummy films, I guess that means you can just blame him then?
Yes and no. Universal's decision to put so many of their classic monsters into one popcorn summer movie with no clue whether it is supposed to be a horror, or fun action-adventure so it ended up being neither is also part of the problem, and a major part at that. The idea of making several solo origin movies first, and if these were successful, then make an ensemble tentpole obviously wasn't so hot back in 2004. Would the film have done differently if it were to come out 10 years later, under a director director? I doubt that too, seeing how The Mummy 3, The Wolfman, Dracula Untold and finally Tom Cruise's The Mummy turned out. It's totally understandable for Universal to be obsessed with their classic horror monster IPs, in the same way WB never seem to be able to let go of the classic folk legend IPs such as Pan/Jack the Giant Slayer/King Arthor that have caused them mostly flops. I'm sorry to say this, but Universal genuinely seem clueless at developing their horror monster IPs, ever since The Mummy returns 16 years ago.
Credit where it's due, the production value is excellent, which is to be expected given the large budget spent on making this film. The big CGI hallway sequences is no faker than The Matrix Revolution in late 2003, the female vampires are a bit awkward through my polished 2017 glasses, but other than that, the technical department have done their jobs superbly. There really isn't much that haven't been said about why the film's bad, on the other hand. The 'horror' aspect consist of only jump scares and very little else, and even Jackman's title character, the only one in the story not terribly underwritten, seems to lack in any kind of flavor so even Dr. Van Helsing becomes a bland and generic hero, one without an origin sub-plot or even a character arc. Where is the crisis for him, what is at stake here on the most personal level? The end of the world if Dracula is not stopped? I'm sorry but that's not good enough. Even the romance subplot feels forced.
(Not to mention this film started Jackman's unfortunate "holding my dead love interest in my arms while howling and sobbing in great pain, and doing all this topless" roles which was repeated 2 years later in X Men: The Last Stand.)
Ironically, Alan Silvestri's soundtrack proved to have enjoyed a far better shelf life than the film itself. Song's from the score was used all over TV, includin multiple times during the peak years of the world's most popular car show, Top Gear. Hearing the Van Helsing soundtrack while watching super cars race through southern Europe is pretty funny.
I agree with the 5-7 star reviews saying Van Helsing is great, mindless silly fun, I do. When the title Universal logo turns black and white and morphs into a burning torch, I was epically excited in my seat, expecting a truly scary film with a grander story than the Mummy films. Needless to say, I was immensely disappointed. I don't give out 8-10 scores easily, and 5-7 is my usual mark for a passable product, hence the score of 4 here, indicating disappointment.