Tries to do too much...

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2004)

** HERE BE SPOILERS **
Van Helsing, this is the story of a man fighting evil monsters around the world. A man that doesn't remember his past well (oh he remember that he is at least 1800 years old), a servant of the catholic church secret agency, is sent to Transylvania to aid and save a noble family's Valerious) right to enter heaven and kill the evil Dracula. Because an ancestor to the family has sworn no member of the family will enter heaven until Dracula is vanquished. Now only two siblings of the family remain, and the church don't want to fail this ally. Van Helsing arrives in Transylvania to find Draculas minions attacking the villagers and hunting the Valerious heirs.
So this is an homage to the monster movies of the old. Unfortunately this is not a very good movie. I think this movie tries to do so much that it fails it all. First and foremost, the central plot is not coherent. Well it is perfectly understandable why the Valerious hunt Dracula, but Dracula has no apparent reason to specifically hunt the Valerious. Sure, they might have been a bit annoying but no prophecy or anything will be fulfilled for Dracula by doing this. Furthermore the plot is extremely shallow. Now, this might be acceptable in an action movie that don't aspire to be more, but this movie keep hinting of a historical vendetta or some sort of coupling between Dracula and Van Helsing. This I find to be very interesting, and to find out the entire story is one of the main reasons to keep watching. Well, the main history, even if the movie tries in vain to keep it a secret, is ridiculously easy to figure out almost at the beginning. The disappointment comes when the movie tries to reveal this exciting piece of information and it is nothing more than what anyone that is barely conscious already knows. I think that you'll unfortunately discover this as well if you ever watch the movie.
Other things that annoyed me was why did Van Helsing use an automatic X-bow, when he can use shotguns, guns or Gatling guns, surely Q, oh did I say Q, I meant Carl, can and did give him some of those. Furthermore the movie confuses how to vanquish vampires and werewolves. As I understand it, werewolves can't stand silver and vampires kind of dislike wooden stakes through their hearts. Why Van Helsing has a silver stake is kind of questionable, to me at least. Additionally for me a totally new aspect of vampires was introduced. They lay eggs. I always thought that new vampires came from people being bitten by other vampires. Oh, finally concerning the story, the addition of Hyde and Franskenstein into the movie is completely unnecessary. They bring nothing to the story and could, should, have been completely cut. Must be that homage-thing.
The acting and editing is not awful but not very good either. I don't know if this is due to lack of interest from the actors or due to inferior material to work with. There are a lot of over-acting, especially Dracula has a long, completely pointless scene, where his over-acting his horrific.
What is good about the movie then. Four things come to mind. The scenery, with the village and woods, is nice. I did find the music good and the special effects in themselves is very good and finally the action parts is entertaining. But when other parts fail, this doesn't help much.
4/10