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Van Helsing
Universal Pictures


5.0

based on 39 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 129 votes
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FILM:

GAMES:

Van Helsing (PS2)

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for nonstop creature action violence and frightening images, and for sensuality

Starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham, Shuler Hensley, Elena Anaya, Will Kemp, and Kevin J. O'Connor

Gabriel Van Helsing (Jackman) is a man cursed with a past he cannot recall and driven by a mission he cannot deny. Charged by a secret organization to seek out and defeat evil the world over, his efforts to rid the world of its nightmarish creatures have been rewarded with the title that now follows him: murderer. (Universal Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Adventure \| Fantasy \| Horror
WRITTEN BY:	Stephen Sommers
DIRECTED BY:	Stephen Sommers
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 19, 2004 Video: October 19, 2004 Theatrical: May 7, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	125 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

This creature feature is exhilarating fun, a richly designed and often quite funny re-exploration of the movie past.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

This beast is as subtle as a Red Bull enema, but it succeeds magnificently as compulsively watchable spectacle.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A movie that's underwritten, overdirected, overproduced and almost constantly over-the-top. But it's also, at its best, a big tongue-in-cheek extravaganza.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Silly and spectacular, and fun.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

There is fun to be had at Van Helsing, but it requires considerable suspension of disbelief at the apparently deliberately ridiculous plot necessary to bring the three monsters together.

Premiere Sharon Allen Burke

Horror classicists may be upset at his tampering with monster mythologies, but everyone else will just be going along for the ride, and they’ll have a terrific time.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

For all its tangle of characters and plot twists, Van Helsing isn't the slightest bit involving, and more than once (especially whenever Beckinsale is onscreen), it is unintentionally hilarious. But it's the rare kind of movie where the badness just adds to the fun.

Variety Todd McCarthy

The sense of evil overkill is entirely representative of the picture itself, which repeatedly looks ready to blow all its fuses due to sensory overload.

Film Threat Clint Morris

You can appreciate the idea and you can appreciate the work that's gone into it, but you can't overlook the fact that Van Helsing hasn't delivered on its full potential.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Universal Studios has unloaded its entire monster catalog in this movie, which is aimed at people with the attention span of a kindergartner. Shreds of coherence and character have been sacrificed to fangs and fisticuffs at every chance.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Old monster movies were thrilling in a way that mingled terror, sexuality and a real preference for the monsters over their tormentors. Van Helsing is a kiddie adventure on an endless, meaningless loop.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Despite the rococo obsessiveness of its special effects and its voracious sampling of past horror movies, Van Helsing is mostly content to offer warmed-over allusions and secondhand thrills.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

A hokey monster mish-mash that plunders the richly textured histories of Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The effect for viewers is that of having inserted one's head in a kettledrum that is being pounded on by drunken monkeys.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Kind of like a basketball team of all-stars -- no names, please -- that has difficulty jelling into one smooth and efficient unit.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The dashing Jackman plays his part well enough, but the script doesn't provide sufficient "Indiana Jones"-style bons mots to win us over.

Portland Oregonian Karen Karbo

If an eardrum-damaging score and people getting routinely slammed into stone walls at a 100 miles an hour without so much as chipping a tooth is your idea of a good time, then Van Helsing won't disappoint.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A monstrous disappointment.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Van Helsing is simply far too much of a good thing, and although Hensley's Frankenstein Monster comes off better than anyone else, the film suffers from some truly inane dialogue and pacing that will likely cause tachycardia in members of the audience old enough to recall who Dwight Frye was.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Van Helsing wears its price tag on its ruffled lamé sleeve. And yet it gives off an aura of what I can only call lavish cheapness.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

It's all cliffhangers, with no downtime in between.

Empire Ian Freer

The result reaches overload very quickly, squandering the potentially cool premise in a headlong assault of set-piece over story.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The horror flick, at its height, was a lyrical caressing of our fears; by the end of this nonsense, you fear for the well-being of the genre. “It’s dead!” [24 May 2004, p. 96]

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Instead of paying homage to these creepy creatures of bygone Hollywood, Sommers seems to be unwittingly lampooning them. The first few minutes of Van Helsing, shot in black and white, look like outtakes from Mel Brooks' gagfest "Young Frankenstein."

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The biggest crime of Van Helsing is that it resurrects classic monsters and fails to make them scary. With a full 132 minutes of feeble jokes and gimcrack phantasmagoria, it's not spine-tingling - it's butt-numbing.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

We haven't had a good Frankenstein, Dracula, or Wolf Man movie in a long time, so here's one where the whole gang shows up. One catch: It's not good.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Van Helsing, a fusion of eye candy and brain sputter, is a long, kinetic, yet dreary mess.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A special-effects extravaganza that uses the barest of excuses to bring these characters together.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The road of excess leads to the palace of boredom in this overblown monster epic.

Village Voice Ed Park

In Van Helsing, the orgy of morphing, shrieking, lightning-cracking, and habitual rope-swinging quickly turns oppressive.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

To be fair, the movie is nothing if not consistent -- the idea is every bit as dumb as the execution.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Here's a shrieking bore of a horror flick.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

In sum, Van Helsing is yet another video game disguised as a wide-screen epic. Here's hoping the box office drives a firm wooden stake through its hokey Hollywood heart.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Sommers suspends the laws of time and physics and forces his characters to spout some of the cheesiest dialogue imaginable.

Slate David Edelstein

You have to feel for the army of talented FX people who must have spent months on scenes--trying to compensate, with their artistry, for the lack of dramatic logic--and having to listen to those lines over and over.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

There are quite a few unintentionally funny moments, although the overall experience was too intensely painful for me to be able to advocate it as being "so bad, it's good."

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

A work of staggering stupidity.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Sommers film just lies there, weighted down by a complete lack of wit, artfulness and internal logic. So it's a disaster -- a big, loud, boring wreck.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Nothing's alive in this trash-heap travesty of warm-weather entertainment, despite the frenetic pace.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.0 (out of 10) based on 129 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jared C. gave it a4:
Van Helsing is a definite thrill ride, just the never-ending action sequences were so prolonged that it got quite annoying after a while.

Louis's brother gave it a9:
Another epic breakthrough by Universal studios. I loved the monster violence, but the story needs some help. Definately a solid 9.

Tommi K. gave it a2:
Noisy, fast paced, boring, lacking any depth. Very nice effects and lots and lots of actions. Also sometimes stylish design and lots of effort. If only it had plot and charisma.

Sam gave it a6:
Easily, may I repeat EASILY, 2004's biggest cinema dissapointment. It's not a terrible movie, I just expected it to be a classic on the lines of Batman Begins or Spider-Man 2, and, well, it wasn't. It had pretty good FX and the action scenes were enjoyable, but the plot was just a rip-off of Godzilla if you think about it. The bad guy is trying to let his billions of babies hatch to rule the world. That's pretty much it. I will, however, admit that Van Helsing and Dracula are likable, but all the other characters hace as much life as Dracula's children, for a few momentary seconds they may have life, but then right after they lose it.

Maddie S. gave it a10:
I guess people hate this movie, huh? Well, I'm weird.

[Anonymous] gave it a3:
To think 160 million dollars went into one of the worst movies i've ever seen. Blade II uses half that amount, and gives you twice the fun, and axes those annoying Transylvanian accents. Dracula's brides were cool when they didn't talk. That crossbow is a good use of Retro-futuristic imagination. But everything else is a total wreck. How could ILM screw up so badly? Those FX guys worked with Steven Spielburg, for heaven's sakes! Even the musical score fails to deliver. Oliver Stone's disasterous Alexander at least had uplifting, epic music from Vangelis, but this stuff was just garbage. Just watch the mummy movies for hollywood cheese. This blunder doesn't even qualify for those lowly standards.

Thomas S. gave it a0:
Easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It's caused me physical pain to watch. The special effects were horrible. In the flying vampire women scene, you can see the digital boxes around them whenever they fly! Don't waste your time.

Van Helsing Universal Pictures

Van Helsing
Universal Pictures