Good Lord! Run for your Lives!

Rating: 4/10 (23 October 2004)

Van Helsing promises a fun ride. The premise of a 19th century monster hunter fighting against Dracula has some silly potential. But Van Helsing fails to deliver.
This movie has no brain and no soul. Like the slavering, leaping CGI beasts Van Helsing fights endlessly, the movie possess no wit, no point, and not even any interesting fight scenes. Van Helsing abandoned an interesting plot, good acting, and quality dialogue in favor of a shambling mess of explosions, undead vampire babies and shiny-cool weapons. The movie is a frightening study of excess, 100% pure, shallow spectacle with nothing underneath. Van Helsing doesn't only fight Dracula, but Frankenstein's Monster and Werewolves and Mr. Hyde and Vampire Brides and Igor and thousands of mini-vampires and dozens of mechanical gnome creatures and angry translyvanian peasants to boot! Lighting shooting through the Monster will bring Dracula's brood to life! Werewolves can slay Dracula, but he uses them as minions! Dracula's lives in an ice-castle, but uses a magic portrait to come to Translyvania! Van Helsing is trapped by hundreds of vampire minions, fortunately he has a device that can DUPLICATE THE POWER OF THE SUN!
Sommers throws every video-game gimmick they can think of into Van Helsing, but neglects the things that actually make a movie good, like a plot a script, and good characters. So we end up with cardboard cutout Van Helsing running around with "romantic interest" Valerious and "Quirky funny guy" Carl, battling endless monsters and searching desperately for a point.
The only scary thing about the flick is that hundreds of millions of dollars were spent and the train wreck that is Van Helsing was the result.