Universal Horror for Dummies.

Rating: 5/10 (30 September 2007)

It would seem that when Kate Beckinsale is taking time out from fighting vampires and werewolves in an Underworld film, she's...........fighting vampires and werewolves in a Van Helsing film. In fact, that pretty much sums up not only four years of Kate's career but also the film of Van Helsing as a whole  a film that makes numerous mistakes yet makes up for it in the form of feel good, guilty action; a film that is loud and brave yet is incidental and one tracked. Director Stephen Sommers successfully re-invented another Karloff classic in 1999 by name of The Mummy; this was followed by a fun but not as good sequel called The Mummy Returns and then by a real piece of entertainment/trash called The Scorpion King. Right at the very beginning though, Sommers himself played a directorial version of Dr. Frankenstein and meshed together two 1970s action films called Alien and The Poseidon Adventure to create Deep Rising  another one of his failures. This final example is rather relevant to Van Helsing since it's a re-invention of Universal's classical era monsters.
A lot of the content in Van Helsing just feels copied, either from an older horror film or something else. The opening scene is rather insulting to the 1930s Frankenstein films, the scene in which Van Helsing (Jackman) is introduced to the gadgets and his overall mission is reminiscent of a James Bond 'Q' and 'M' scene and the whole film in general just feels like a cross between 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' and 'Shrek'. I feel sorry for the people who hadn't seen any Universal horror films before they saw this. I really enjoyed Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein from the 1930s  even Branagh's 1994 version was outgoing and experimental (although it just 'felt' poorly made in the end) but Van Helsing as a film is just a dumbed down version of a would be franchise waiting to be re-injected at a time of big budget, CGI fun-fests. Yes, I 'got' the references to previous films: when The Monster states 'Friend!' and when the 'It's Alive' quote is muttered at the very beginning but the film is so dumbed down, we need to be 'reminded' that Vampires don't like sunlight; that Werewolves need to be killed with silver bullets and that the full moon transforms them  no doubt newcomers to these villains will be in awe: "Wow! That's a really cool  they thought of everything." True, only these are 70 year old concepts you're gushing at.
The film also suffers from within in the form of blatant mistakes and a poorly structured narrative. First, the character of The Monster is more reminiscent to that of an opera singer given the way he is almost singing his lines like a tenor rather than mumbling through the film in true 'body parts made form dead men and the mind of a murderer' fashion. Also, during one scene Anna (Beckinsale) jumps off a walkway onto a rope above a boiling pot of chemicals when two enemies are coming for her: why the hell does she do this? The two foot soldiers are small and beatable yet she does the tricky thing and jumps onto a rope. She ends up defeating them on the rope anyway but it seemed a pointless excuse for an action scene of some sort. Secondly; after a carriage chase through the woods at night, the very next scene is daylight as one character consoles another on the ground yet the flying woman/vampire bat is exposed to it on the cliff-edge. The fact the film switches from night to day so quickly AND has the vampire in the daylight is laughable. Again, a poor excuse for an action scene of some sort and the scene where the sidekick solves everything towards the end in about a minute was ridiculous.
Van Helsing is really just a film for the people who missed the first Universal horror franchise and if they do decide to track down the 1930s and beyond films then they'll probably be disappointed with them which in a way is sad and unfortunate. The effects are good and the fight scenes entertaining in a way but it's nothing more than a Deep Rising of Universal Horror.