Review of Van Helsing (2004) by Filipeneto — 20 Feb 2018

This film portrays Van Helsing's efforts to fight Dracula, which is now trying to give life to his children through the research of the late Doctor Frankenstein. Directed and written by Stephen Sommers, this adventure film has the participation of Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh and Shuler Hensley in the lead roles.

There are certain adventure films, inspired by horror movies, that makes a jumble of elements and characters that have nothing to do with each other. This is one of those films, mixing Dracula to Frankenstein's monster. Even Dr. Jekyll (and his alter-ego, Mr. Hyde) enters the movie! This is not new, has been done in other films and works well when it's done carefully, but definitely wasn't the case here. The script is confusing and makes an attempt to transform Van Helsing, originally a Dutch professor with taste for the occult, in a kind of good supernatural entity destined to hunt down and kill evil monsters. Sorry, but the way this character ended up being "deconstructed" was wrong. The director/writer could have made other more interesting options like keeping Van Helsing more faithful to Stoker's novel and try to frame him in a story in the current time, perhaps. The truth is that this film is a clear script error, resulting of flying imagination of its director/screenwriter.

The actors were good in their roles, without surprises or special highlights, except perhaps Shuler Hensley, who played a character far from the usual monster, in constant psychological conflict because of his horrid appearance and inner humanity and goodness. The accent of some characters wasn't well done and if the idea was to make them closer to the Romanian universe (when is usually located Dracula's Castle), it failed and became them more humorous than they can be at certain supposedly dramatic moments. The setting, costumes, makeup and sound, visual and special effects are too imaginative, like coming out of a Marvell comic or a graphic novel. The soundtrack, despite the good performance, also didn't stand out particularly.

This film is well seeing and entertaining, but doesn't bring big surprises or positively impresses the audience. Far from being a good movie, is ordinary and we see it without big pleasure or expectation.