Van Helsing

Year of release : 2004

Run time : 2h11m

Genre : Supernatural Horror / Action

Cast : Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Kevin J. O’Connor, Elena Anaya, Josie Maran

The movie was written and directed by Stephen Sommers.

The movie opens in 1887, in Transylvania, in black and white. The villagers are coming with torches to Frankenstein’s castle, as they know he robs graves. Victor Frankenstein creates his monster, with the help of Dracula, and his assistant, Igor. Dracula wants the monster to bring his many dead children to life.

The villagers come for Frankenstein, and his monster runs with his corpse in his arms, so they burn down the mill he entered. Dracula and his 3 brides come for the villagers, and they scatter. The mill burns to the ground, and they think the monster is dead.

One year later, Van Helsing is hunting Mr. Hyde, who is big like The Hulk. Van Helsing’s superiors want Hyde alive, but Hyde is putting up a fight, trying to k1ll Van Helsing, so Van Helsing ends up k1lling him. Because Van Helsing hunts and k1lls monsters who turn into people after they die, people hate him, thinking him a murderer.

Van Helsing doesn’t remember who he is, and he might be immortal.

Van Helsing is working for an order of the Vatican, and is sent to Transylvania, Romania, where people are terrorized by Dracula and his kin. His superior tells him a Romanian knight swore that him and his family’s souls will never rest unable to enter heaven until they k1lled Dracula. Only two remain from his blood line, Anna and her brother, Velkan, who are Roma royalty. He is asking Van Helsing to help them k1ll Dracula, and help the souls of their kin to enter heaven.

His superior gives him something the knight left at the Vatican, a torn piece of a document with a symbol which matches Van Helsing’s ring.

Van Helsing is given friar Carl, as his assistant, who is an inventor.

Anna and her brother, Valkan, are trying to catch a werewolf, but the beast catches her brother as he tries to save her, and they go down together.

 

Entering Transylvania, they meet Anna and the villagers right away, and end up fighting together just as fast, as Dracula’s brides are making an appearance, trying to k1ll people, and the strangers.

Two of Dracula’s brides almost k1ll Anna, but they stop as they feel the 3d bride dying (she was k1lled with an arrow dipped in holy water by Van Helsing).

Instead of being happy, the villagers hate them, for the vampires only k1ll a few of them a month to survive, now they’ll k1ll for revenge.

Dracula is using werewolves as his slaves.

Anna wants to go to Dracula’s castle at night, but Van Helsing tells her to wait until daylight. Because she doesn’t listen, he sprays her with something and she falls asleep. Waking up at night, she sees her brother in the castle, turning into a werewolf. He only has enough time to say he knows Dracula’s secret, before turning.

Van Helsing wants to k1ll him, while Anna wants to save him. They team up and go to Dracula’s castle.

Dracula is trying to bring the offsprings (they look like hundreds) from only one wife to life, as the remaining wives protest they can’t bear losing so many of their kin anymore. They come alive, and fly with the brides to the village, to teach them how to hunt and feed. Luckily for the villagers the offsprings die before they k1ll them all. But there’s at least two more batches from the other 2 brides.

I personally enjoyed the movie, although after an hour it started to lose me. The characters are nothing like what you know from their original books or movies.

For some unknown reason, Romanians have Russian names, and a Russian accent. And that’s not the only thing they got wrong about Romania.

I liked the costumes, especially those of Anna. Anna is wearing the Romanian traditional “ie” blouse. Anna was gorgeous. So were the 2 red-haired brides of Dracula.

I also liked the world they created, the set design.

And now what I didn’t like :

They keep on talking about Transylvania as if it’s a town or something, but it’s a region in Romania which at the time was under Hungarian rule, and didn’t exist as a separate entity anymore, being divided into counties answering to Budapest.

The men like Van Helsing, Dracula, Carl, had bad haircuts. Dracula’s hair looked like a woman’s ponytail.

Dracula’s brides are fully clothed when in human form, but when they turn to winged creatures they are naked but looking like a doll, if you know what I mean. How does that work?

The werewolves turn human if the full moon is covered by clouds!

Anna keeps on falling, hitting trees on her way down, but she’s fine, doesn’t break anything, then SPOILERS at the end, Van Helsing as a werewolf hits her, and she instantly dies END OF SPOILERS.

SPOILERS Dracula’s offsprings although I think they were supposed to be babies, were huge, and it looked like hundreds, came only from one wife! Like WTF?1 How can something dead procreate?! END OF SPOILERS

 

The acting was good.

The soundtrack was good, it had choirs.

The visual effects were good.

The movie has a score under 35 from the critics of Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and under 6.3 from the audiences of said platforms.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B. IMDB a 6.1.

The movie grossed a little over 300 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of around 170 million dollars.

The movie was nominated for a few awards, including for 5 Saturn awards, and for 4 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards!

Rating : Worth a watch !