he villagers in 19th-century Transylvania, torches in hand, have come to Castle Frankenstein to rout its occupant, Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Samuel West), who has been robbing graves. But in his laboratory high in a tower, the good doctor is at the moment of his greatest triumph: reanimating a corpse stitched together from the bodies of seven men. As lighting flashes, the monster twitches! "It's alive!" Dr. Frankenstein cries.
But Dracula (Roxburgh) is on hand as well, and he has plans for the monster, which comes as a rude shock to the doctor. The monster (Shuler Hensley), meanwhile, has fled the castle out the back door, evading the villagers. But only for a moment: The villagers trail him to the abandoned windmill, which they set ablaze.
In Paris, meanwhile, a mysterious man in a greatcoat and black fedora is tracking a beast that has killed a woman. In the bell tower of Notre Dame cathedral, the man reveals himself to be Gabriel Van Helsing (Jackman), an assassin for the Catholic Church. He has tracked the beast, Mr. Hyde, from London. Defeating him, Van Helsing cements his undeserved reputation as a murderer.
Back in the Vatican, in the bowels of St. Peter's Basilica, Cardinal Jinette (Alun Armstrong) gives Van Helsing his newest assignment: to aid the beleaguered Valerious family in Transylvania, who have sworn a blood oath to defeat Dracula, or suffer eternal damnation if they fail. Only the gypsy princess Anna (Beckinsale) and her brother, Velkan (Will Kemp), remain of the once-noble family.
In Transylvania, Anna and Velkan are trying to trap a werewolf. Though Anna fights valiantly, she is unable to save Velkan, who is bitten by the beast before plunging off the side of a cliff.
When Van Helsing and his sidekick, Carl (David Wenham), arrive in the Valerious' home village, Anna barely has a chance to tell him to get lost when the townspeople are set upon by three winged vampires: Aleera (Elena Anaya), Marishka (Josie Maran) and Verona (Sylvia Colloca), the brides of Dracula. They have come to eliminate the last surviving member of the Valerious clan. Only Van Helsing, armed with a gas-driven crossbow, can save her.
Improbable, idiotic and ignorant of the past
With Van Helsing, writer/director Sommers (of the hit Mummy movies) sets out to reinvent the classic Universal monster franchises of the 1930s and '40s for the attention-deficited audiences of the 21st century. At this he fails miserably. Only the movie's opening sequence, shot in glorious black and white, hints at what might have been: rampaging villagers with torches, a wailing monster, a burning windmill, all enhanced with state-of-the art CG.
But from there, like the view from Dracula's fortress, it's all downhill. Like Sommers' second Mummy movie, Van Helsing fairly careens from one massive action set piece to the next, each more preposterous and idiotic than the one before, with only the barest respite for obligatory dialogue to move the plot along. The plot, which Sommers feels ingeniously connects the three disparate monster franchises, is overly complex and convoluted.
The characters are thinner than paper, and despite the considerable star power of Jackman and Beckinsale, the actors barely muster a spark of chemistry. Poor Beckinsale, corseted in what can only be described as a gypsy S&M hooker getup, spends most of her time running, jumping, falling and swinging improbably from long ropes. The charismatic Jackman is similarly ill used, mainly a stand-in for Sommers' elaborate stunts and visual effects. And, as in the previous Mummy films, the CG effects look cheap, more videogame than feature film.
As for the monsters? They are basically targets for Van Helsing's steampunk-meets-James Bond weapons. Gone are the Wolf Man's anguish and Dracula's seductive charm. Roxburgh and his three brides, in particular, play so over the top that they are laughable when they're not irritating. Roxburgh, trying to ape Bela Lugosi, even manages to mangle the vampire's trademark Romanian accent (for comparison, see Gary Oldman's brilliant portrayal of the tortured count in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Dracula).
Only Hensley, strident as he is, seems to capture a bit of the pathos that is at the heart of the Frankenstein story, and Sommers' reinvention of that monster is one of the few bright spots in the movie.
