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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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79
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64
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69
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Van Helsing

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 129 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Adventure | Fantasy | Horror
Written by: Stephen Sommers
Directed by: Stephen Sommers
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 7, 2004
DVD: October 19, 2004
Running Time: 125 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: The Mummy The Mummy Returns
GAMES: Van Helsing (PS2)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
This beast is as subtle as a Red Bull enema, but it succeeds magnificently as compulsively watchable spectacle.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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 theyll have a terrific time.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
A hokey monster mish-mash that plunders the richly textured histories of Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Empire Ian Freer
The result reaches overload very quickly, squandering the potentially cool premise in a headlong assault of set-piece over story.
Read Full Review >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. Its 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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Van Helsing, a fusion of eye candy and brain sputter, is a long, kinetic, yet dreary mess.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
A special-effects extravaganza that uses the barest of excuses to bring these characters together.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The road of excess leads to the palace of boredom in this overblown monster epic.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ed Park
In Van Helsing, the orgy of morphing, shrieking, lightning-cracking, and habitual rope-swinging quickly turns oppressive.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Nothing's alive in this trash-heap travesty of warm-weather entertainment, despite the frenetic pace.
What Our Users Said
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.
