Van Helsing Review

The eponymous character of Abraham Van Helsing is a creation of Bram Stoker in his 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. He's an aged Dutch doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments. He's supposed to have been simply an aged medical doctor of his time, but many adaptations of this character depict him as a vampire hunter, monster hunter, and the archenemy to Count Dracula. One of these creative reinterpretations was a movie released in 2004, Van Helsing. It is frankly not a good movie, but it's an interesting form of low-budget B-movie that I doubt anyone could have foreseen as little as a decade before its release. Silly a movie as it is, it's a guilty pleasure of mine to watch.

Famed monster slayer Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is dispatched to Transylvania with Friar Carl (David Wenham) to assist the last of the Valerious bloodline in defeating Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh). Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale) reveals that Dracula has formed an unholy alliance with Dr. Frankenstein's monster (Shuler Hensley) and is hell-bent on exacting a centuries-old curse on her family. Together Anna and Van Helsing set out to destroy their common enemy, but uncover some unsettling secrets along the way.

Ridiculous and over the top as Van Helsing is, I have to give it props for creativity. The character of Van Helsing is vastly different from his original depiction in Bram Stoker's Dracula. This is a young Van Helsing with more monster hunting gadgets and gizmos than any one person should be able to carry on themselves and still walk. This Van Helsing wields a rapid fire crossbow, spinning wrist blades, explosives, retractable silver stakes, and weaponized holy water. All of which are creatively used to his advantage in entertaining action scenes. The movie was distributed by Universal Pictures who made iconic monster movies back in the 1940's including Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and werewolves. Van Helsing brought several of these Hollywood icons together again in a way similar to the multi-monster movies that also Universal produced in the 1940's such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man or House of Dracula. There's even an implication that an escaped Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde is true identity of The Hunchback of Notre Dame whom Van Helsing encounters in Paris early in the film. The way that these monsters came together felt natural for this particular world setting and the varied methods of combating these creatures made for some interesting fight scenes, especially in cases when multiple monsters were ganging up on our heroes and a weapon that might hurt one creature would have no effect on the other creature.

I am convinced that this was a fairly low budget movie, or at least it was for the most part inexpensive to make. I'd estimate that roughly 85-90% of Van Helsing was filmed with the actors in front of a green screen and then a fleet of very busy CGI artists filled in the details afterwards. I realize that CGI can be very costly, but I can't imagine it being more expensive than creating elaborate, believable sets or filming on location. There have been a number of movies that basically were CGI intensive with actors in front of green screens which ended up looking just terrible, such as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. This movie looks pretty solid, though. Many of the monsters are just as CGI generated as the villages and castles they terrorize, but they look great. And I feel that it is important to say that Van Helsing features one of the best looking movie werewolves I've ever seen, even if it's transformation is unorthodox.

Van Helsing received mostly negative reviews. It was criticized for having poor acting, way too much CGI and special effects, and being a mockery of the horror genre. I can't exactly disagree with most of these criticisms. Most of the acting is very melodramatic and is so stylized that it's hard not to scoff at the movie's attempts to look cool. I can't for the life of me imagine the actors falling apart in peals of laughter at some of the poses and superfluous, artificial back flips that were required of them. Parts of the dialogue were so cheesy that I simply had to roll my eyes before pressing on in the movie. Van Helsing isn't trying to be a horror movie; the horror genre is supposed to elicit feelings of fear in its viewers. This movie doesn't even make a poor attempt to do that. Sure, there are iconic monsters from horror movies, but Van Helsing is an action movie and the action choreography is fun, if a little hard to swallow at times. Critics may have dragged the movie through the mud, but the film grossed $300 million worldwide and did well with the general public, becoming one of the biggest blockbusters released in 2004. That ought to tell you something about its quality.

Objectively, Van Helsing isn't a terrifically good movie, but it is a whole lot of fun. The action is great, the visuals are above average, and the ridiculous story is entertaining enough to enjoy. It starts out looking like a special effects overkill, but by the end it succeeds in assembling all the monsters and plot threads into a high-voltage climax. Van Helsing is silly, but spectacularly fun. If it doesn't sound like something you'd enjoy, you probably won't. I did, however, and I recommend seeing Van Helsing for the fun of it. With so many classic monsters present, it makes for a good movie to watch during Halloween. I have a copy of Van Helsing sitting on my movie shelf next to other titles I like to enjoy every now and again.

What is your favorite monster hunter movie? What do you like about it? Comment below and tell me all about it!

Underworld Movie Review

When they are portrayed correctly, I like a good werewolf or vampire movie. They usually aren't portrayed very well. I've wanted to see Underworld (2003) for  awhile since it features both vampires and werewolves duking it out. About eleven years later I finally got around to it. I kind of liked it, but for the wrong reason.

Vampires and werewolves have been sworn enemies for hundreds of years, never seen by human eyes. Now fought in the present the conflict takes and unexpected turn. Selene (Kate Beckinsale), a beautiful vampire warrior, uncovers a Lycan/werewolf plot that could prove fatal for her entire race. She shadows a human, Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman), the Lycans' supposed target. Selene is unable to stop the Lycans in time and during a violent struggle, Michael is bitten by Lucian (Michael Sheen), the Lycan overlord, long thought to be dead. Michael will become a werewolf on the next full moon, but how does this fit into the Lycan's plans? Both sides must decide how to end the conflict and save their species as new and terrifying secrets unearth themselves and threatens the existence of both species.

The story here is not very complicated or terribly interesting. It's like, fight fight, fight, fight, "Oh, the Lycans are up to something," fight, fight, fight, fight, "Uh-oh, you're gonna be a werewolf," fight ,fight, fight, fight, "The Lycans have Michael! But why?" fight, fight, fight, fight. That could have been my summary paragraph; not much else happens beyond that until the last fifteen minutes or so. There are plenty of plot twists, but you can see most of them coming from a long way off. Even with a predictable and basic plot, the plot twists do their job well by keeping the audience guessing, even if the audience manages to guess the outcome sooner than the movie would probably like them to. The writing isn't bad in terms of plot development, but the story itself was sub-par at best.

Underworld was painfully stylized. It had a very artificial color palette; lots of black and light blues, with the very occasional and contrasting bright red for the blood. It seemed to me like the actors were striking artificial poses and posturing to the point that it resembled a sexy cologne commercial, especially with the black leather catsuits and unreal color and artificial backgrounds. Everyone was overacting in an almost exaggerated way, and the lack of character development made it difficult to care about any of the characters. It looks like they were trying to emulate The Matrix with the leather bodysuits, trench coats, sunglasses, and slow-motion action but failed to be anywhere near as good.

Unfortunately the vampires weren't very vampire-y, and the werewolves weren't very werewolf-y. The vampires possess the superhuman physical prowess commonly seen in pop culture, but none of the mystical weaknesses of mythical vampires; crosses, holy water, garlic, stakes, etc. The werewolves have a pretty impressive transformation process, but the end result is pretty lame. They resemble gorillas with canine snouts and claws. This is the only time I've seen werewolves considered immortal like vampires are. Even when they were CGI animated, they still resembled men in rubber monster suits. That was probably the most disappointing part of the movie for me.

What I thought was most interesting about Underworld wasn't actually part of the movie itself. As I was watching it, I kept thinking of a couple of games by White Wolf, Inc. called Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade; storytelling role playing games both set in the World of Darkness setting. As it turned out, White Wolf, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Lakeshore Entertainment Studio for seventeen counts of copyright infringement and claimed over eighty points of unique similarity between White Wolf's game systems and the movie. White Wolf was granted an expedited hearing and the lawsuit ended in a confidential settlement. Seriously, that was what was most interesting about the movie to me, and it wasn't even a part of the movie. Underworld did earn a few points with me only because it resembled a game I like to play. Neat as that is, it doesn't say much for the movie itself.

Underworld is not the most creative, memorable, good movie by any metric. The acting is forced and exaggerated, the blocking looks like it was designed by a modeling runway director, the colors look out of place and unreal, the story was weak, and I didn't particularly like the vampires and werewolves. It is good for being an over-the-top action movie with magical guns that never run out of ammunition. This movie did earn a few points for resembling a couple of role playing games that I enjoyed, but that was about it. Don't bother with Underworld unless you really want to see a crazy action movie that asks you to take its credibility beyond a movie's normal threshold. If you do play Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade, you'll probably get just a little bit more out of it. That alone bumped my assessment of the movie from "meh" to "eh, okay."

What's the best movie werewolf you've seen? Not the best werewolf movie, but the movie werewolf that looks the best. Comment below and tell me about it!