Today, we’re re-watching Van Helsing from 2004. If I remember correctly, I saw this movie in theatres when it first came out. I don’t remember a ton from it, though I’m sure I’ve seen it since then.

 

My memories from the film are primarily: Hugh Jackman (who I liked at the time, but am no longer a fan of), Kate Beckinsale, a trio of pretty vampire ladies, anachronistic weaponry, lots of leather, cheesiness, and Kate Beckinsale’s brother, Werewolf McWerewolfyPants, as I recall my friends and I called him at the time.

 

Here’s a brief summary from IMDB: During the late 19th century, the famed monster hunter Dr. Gabriel Van Helsing and his faithful priest sidekick Carl head to Eastern Europe in Transylvania to track down Count Dracula. They end up in a town whose inhabitants are tormented by vampires and they battle with the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster.

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Watching it now, I’m surprised that I didn’t remember that it was a multi-monster movie. It kicks off with who I assume is Dracula, working with Dr. Frankenstein (is he paying Dr. Frankenstein? I think so.) to create The Monster. 

 

Hugh Jackman’s first appearance - strangely, I kind of didn’t recognize him with the cowl covering most of his face, the large-brimmed hat, and the flowing locks of hair. He’s fighting a deeply CGI’d Mr. Hyde, shooting off grappling hooks, and using some sort of quickly whirring saw-bladed weapons, all while maintaining very glossy, gently cascading curls. (If his hair remains that way for the rest of the movie, that’s going to be the most unrealistic part of it for me.)

 

Oh gosh now he’s in the Vatican and his hair is worse? Like it was very lovely before. Wrong, but lovely. But now it’s very 80s & vaguely feathered. It looks nice in a closeup but from far away it’s a bit dumb. Why did we switch his wig? (They just showed us Kate Beckinsale’s photo…with a projector? When does this take place? 1887…I guess it doesn’t matter, there’s a machine gun being tested in the Vatican’s basement. Anyway, her hair is even more perfect than Van Helsing’s was before, and the picture in the projector looks like a modern photograph - I just checked, the first patent for a projector is from 1876, but I doubt it was glamour shots ready.)

 

Oh hey! That’s Faramir! Friar Faramir, apparently. I wonder what his accent is supposed to be. I find it mildly off-putting and confusing. (To be clear, the actor is David Wenham, who played Faramir in The Lord of the Rings films.)

 

There’s my werewolfy boy! Man. He is a werewolf man. He also has, as the youth would say, quite a face card. (Did I use that right? Unsure. But he is VERY pretty. Possibly even prettier than Kate Beckinsale.) It was very exciting for me when he showed up as a ballet dancer in Step Up 2: The Streets (I unironically love that movie, just so that we are clear.) I have since learned his name is Will Kemp, which is also the name of one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, who was also an actor and a dancer! I wonder if our Werewolf is named Will Kemp just coincidentally, as an homage, or if it's a stage name.

 

I say this with no hate: this movie is worse than I remembered - mostly because of the inconsistencies. Let’s bundle everyone up because it's cold out and cover them with dirt, except for Kate Beckinsale - we’ll put her in a velvet shirt and high-heeled boots. She acknowledges that the vampires are after her, but she’s not going to wear any protective clothing. (It’s a fab outfit and she looks great, but it’s clearly for looks.) She somehow manages to land on her feet (with perfect hair!) anytime she is dropped hundreds of feet in the air, and despite being slammed into numerous branches along the way, all she has to show for it is a small, artistic bruise on her forehead. There are (no pun intended, this time!) no stakes - she would have died several times over by now.

 

We’ve already seen Dracula, and his teeth grow into a full mouth of fangs. Not my favorite vampire style (I like the standard two-pointy-fangs), but I can live with it. I don’t care for the three vampire bride’s vampire forms - I do wonder if we will see Dracula at all in this form? They have white/grey skin (bodysuit-esque) with some crepey-skin folds and wings, naked except for jewelry and makeup. I do like the transformation - their vampire forms meld neatly into their human ones, and the areas where their skin and wings are get turned into their dresses and capes. It’s a well-done effect.

 

(Interestingly, when their teeth go vamp, their mouth grows and their canines extend, but they don’t get a full mouth of fangs like Drac did. Is this vampire sexism?)

 

I get that Kate Beckinsale is the last of her line, and apparently a princess, but it is very strange to me that she’s “of the people” enough to be standing on top of a…well? in the town’s square with the villagers, but stands out so much in terms of her clothing and style (cleanliness, cut, and color - her whole vibe, really).

 

And now we’re in Dracula’s castle! Apparently, Dracula doesn’t believe in gravity. After sleeping in a frozen coffin thing that magically unfreezes (at sunrise?), he flies out and onto the ground, but then casually walks to the edge of the room and walks up the wall…and then continues onto the ceiling. It's comical, and I don't think it's meant to be.

 

…I don’t think this movie has any sense of time. The Brides attacked Kate Beckinsale in daylight (it was cloudy so no sun), and then when they cut to Dracula and the Brides (sounds like a killer punk band) they were sleeping - when Dracula woke up suddenly, I assumed it was sunrise. But then we cut back to Kate Beckinsale & Van Helsing in her house and it’s definitely nighttime and right after they returned from the village.

 

Werewolves don’t believe in gravity either! Werewolf McWerewolfyPants just crawled on his back up the wall. And ooph, that’s a gross werewolf transformation - just tear off your human skin! (Visually it was fine, all CGI and not much gore, but thinking about it gives me the ick.)

 

Alright, we’re going to stop with the straight up reactions - we’re still aiming to go largely spoiler free here, despite the fact that the movie is 22 years old. 

 

On the whole - Van Helsing suffers from CGI overload, which is not necessarily uncommon in action movies of the early 2000s. I wouldn’t say that that’s why the movie is bad, but it certainly doesn’t help. A little restraint could certainly have been employed to great effect. I didn’t find it particularly funny, though there were clearly lines written to be so. It has too much plot for a movie that is almost non-stop action - I think if it had embraced a bit more of it’s own camp and scaled down on a little bit of the lore, it would have been more successful for me.

 

That said, I didn’t hate it, and I did enjoy it when I watched it so many moons ago in theatres. It would be better suited to watching with friends, with a lot of popcorn and snacks, where you can goof on the silly, instead of trying to watch it more seriously to write an article about it. It did, in my opinion, earn it’s 24% on Rotten Tomatoes (to be fair, the audience score is 57%). But strictly as a popcorn flick? Sure, it's fine!

 

As a side note - it’s interesting, I’ve heard people talk about this film as a bisexual awakening, a la the 1999 film The Mummy with Brendan Fraiser and Rachel Weisz, because everyone in it is pretty. (Strangely enough, The Mummy, both films are written & directed by Stephen Sommers - The Mummy is classic to me, filled with charm, imminently quotable one-liners, and solid lore.) To me, Van Helsing feels almost like a CW show, by which I mean everyone is pretty, and that’s the focus instead of their acting. Kate Beckinsale is better than Van Helsing, and while she looks gorgeous, it’s a shame that they focused on how pretty she is, and putting her in tight costumes instead of letting her act. (Maybe we’ll have to do Underworld next week to let her redeem herself.)

 

What I like about vampires, and truly horror in general, is that at its heart, horror examines the human condition. In the dark and scary world that we live in, I’ve long struggled to watch or read things that are just human being cruel or depraved to one another - those things can and do happen in the real world. (Maybe not to the extent as seen in horror, but sometimes.) I find that if I’m going to partake in media about the awful things that humans do to each other, it needs to be in either a procedural or an action setting - I enjoy Criminal Minds, for example, but you could take almost any of those unsubs and twist the story telling just a hair into the horror and it would be far too disturbing for me in most cases. (Cults I can go either way with - I watched Midsommar with Florence Pugh and was so incredibly disturbed and planned to never watch it again. I own it on DVD now and have only watched it once more, but there’s something deeply fascinating about it, despite how disturbing I found it.)

 

Supernatural horror is a different ball game - by knowing these things aren’t real (right? ….right?!), it allows us to separate from the story just a bit - we can be enthralled, scared, delighted, terrified - but at the end of the day, we are safe. The serial killer next door or the school shooter don’t go away when you turn off the TV like vampires, ghosts, and goblins do. And because of that, we can lean into the horror. Who are you when you are scared? When you’ve been broken down, terrified, and lost everything? Is your humanity your salvation, or your downfall? Does it exist? Are humans the monsters all along? 

 

For me, where something like Van Helsing falls flat, is in that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. You can certainly make media with horror elements that is action-packed or funny (I’m looking at you, Buffy) - but you need to know that’s what you are going for. If you are going to try to be all of those things - a horror movie, that is rife with action and adventure sequences, has quips and wit, has emotion and depth - then it needs to have laser focus. (Granted, something like Buffy had 7 seven seasons to accomplish that, and there were certainly missteps along the way. But something like Sinners, which has a runtime of 2 hours and 18 minutes, compared to Van Helsing’s 2 hours and 11 minutes, manages to accomplish all of those things and more - it has a strong voice, and manages not only to be horror, but also funny at times, has incredible action sequences, and an incredible depth - all while making clear political statements that resonate both about the time it was set in and our current day.) 

 

Verdict: Two out of five stakes. Probably wouldn’t watch again unprompted.