Stop Sommers Before He Kills Again!

Rating: 1/10 (10 September 2004)

As a fan of 1) good horror films, 2) Bram Stoker's novel, 3) Murnau, Browning, and Terence Fisher's 'Dracula' takes, 4) Peter Cushing; and having detested Stephen Sommers' 'Mummy' films, and having read all the reviews, I was not exactly in a great hurry to see this film. But I was willing put my purist's taste in the closet, along with my critical faculties, all my higher brain functions in fact, and just take this as zippy moving wallpaper, and finally renting it on the cheap on DVD, I found that even my spectacularly low expectations were not only stooped to but surpassed by this woefully empty exercise in CGI doodling off. The 3-page script I would reckon to have been packed together by a bunch of excitable pre-teens riffing on their favorite Horror and Adventure flicks, but I suspect such kids would have provided more solid characterization and plotting than this thing provides. Firstly Mr Sommers et al toss out everything that was interesting and meaningful about the Van Helsing character and the Dracula legend and fill in the gaps with a lot of agony aunt superhero stuff and a few good ideas (the secret Vatican anti-monster force, the warrior Gypsy clan) that are of no interest whatsoever to them, as they are only interested in layering on effects and stunts, the cumulative effect of which is incredibly boring. Making the heroes nearly as indestructible as the villains - as in the bit where Kate Beckinsale falls about four stories down through a tree's branches and lands with nary a scratch - really helps to make you care and believe in them.
As with many modern movies, it is magnificently shot and dazzlingly designed, but provides no sensual pleasure whatsoever in its technical wizardry. Hugh Jackman does the intense superhero bit surprisingly well and all he requires is a script with lines of dialogue that make sense. Richard Roxburgh I wish would stop playing villains, for here as in 'Moulin Rouge' he goes right off the deep end with a stupidly campy performance. Beckinsale lacks steel, humor, and anything resembling sex appeal; I've followed her career since 'Cold Comfort Farm' and she gets duller by the passing year. David Wenham, the most talented of the three Aussies wasting themselves here, manages to make a couple of lines work with a good comic act. Compare this film to the genius of Tim Burton's 'Sleepy Hollow' (from which it steals a steroid-pumped version of the coach chase) which combined old and modern movie tropes so cleverly. At the point when I checked how much of it I had sat through - 81 minutes - and realized it still had something like 40-50 minutes to go, it was high time for the eject button. Abominable.