Just gets sillier

Rating: Null/10 (1 June 2004)

*spoilers* >From the very beginning, it's obvious that VAN HELSING was going to be an over the top CGI adventure pic that isn't meant to be taken too seriously. Fair enough: the initial scenes are fun, especially the fight with Mr Hyde and the first attack of Dracula's brides. BUT THE FILM JUST GETS SILLIER. By the time we've been introduced to other-dimensional mirror doorways and a vampire reproductive cycle that seems to be more like an alien pod-laying idea stolen from a Science Fiction move, this film becomes just too preposterous! If the baby vampires had been better designed they could've (slightly) saved this film. As it is, they resemble silly, cartoonish bat-things straight out of a Scooby Doo cartoon. When the first batch attack the village they don't seem nasty enough to the THE BIG THREAT that they're meant to be. IF these critters had actually looked like creepy flying baby vampires they might've worked (but I think that makers of this film wimped out of that idea because they considered the sight of exploding human-looking baby vampires to be too horrible.) The sequence where a vast chamber of hanging cocoons is filled with electricity looks like some out-take from a sub-par Matrix film. The monsters in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN are far, far better than the Universal monsters on show here. Dracula, especially, is a travesty of the original. Awful! Pathetic! My 12 year-old nephew, however, thought the film was great.