Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
72 Adela
39 Adventures of Power
78 Afghan Star
61 After the Storm
66 Afterschool
xx All the Best
58 American Casino
72 Amreeka
48 Antichrist
73 Araya
62 Art & Copy
55 As Seen Through These Eyes
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
13 Beautiful Life, A
70 Beeswax
35 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71 Big Fan
66 Black Dynamite
51 Blind Date
xx Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76 Bliss
35 Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57 Boys Are Back, The
45 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
70 Bronson
45 Burning Plain, The
xx Carriers
55 Casi Divas
57 Chelsea on the Rocks
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
59 Collapse
44 Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
67 Departures
xx Dil Bole Hadippa
71 Disgrace
xx Do Knot Disturb
70 Earth Days
24 Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
xx Eulogy for a Vampire
xx Everyone Else
xx Fatal Promises
56 Fifty Dead Men Walking
62 Five Minutes of Heaven
74 Flame & Citron
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
28 Free Style
xx From Mexico with Love
50 Fuel
25 Gentlemen Broncos
50 Give Me Your Hand
58 Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
52 Grace
64 Harmony and Me
81 Headless Woman, The
xx Heretics, The
63 Horse Boy, The
73 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
74 Humpday
94 Hurt Locker, The
29 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16 If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75 In Search of Beethoven
83 In the Loop
61 Intimate Enemies
42 Irene in Time
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
19 Labor Day
xx Laila's Birthday
41 Little Ashes
41 Little Traitor, The
66 Liverpool
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
83 Maid, The
xx Ministers, The
59 More Than a Game
67 Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
xx Mystery Team
48 New York, I Love You
73 Night and Day
66 No Impact Man
47 Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34 Other Man, The
xx Painter Sam Francis, The
54 Paper Heart
xx Paradise
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
44 Peter and Vandy
35 Play the Game
77 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx Pretty Ugly People
65 Providence Effect, The
76 Rembrandt's J'accuse
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
40 Shrink
61 Skin
77 Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx Skiptracers
46 Splinterheads
39 St. Trinian's
89 Still Walking
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
55 Storm
65 Tetro
70 That Evening Sun
72 Thirst
xx Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61 Trucker
xx Turning Green
83 U2 3D
66 Unmade Beds
66 Unmistaken Child
70 Visual Acoustics
55 Walt & El Grupo
67 Way We Get By, The
69 We Live in Public
64 Wedding Song, The
64 Where is Where?
xx White on Rice
74 Woman in Berlin, A
69 World's Greatest Dad
70 Yes Men Fix the World
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx You, the Living

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Van Helsing

EMAILPRINTUniversal Pictures

Van Helsing reviews
36
5.0 User Score:

Generally unfavorable reviews

Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 129 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

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)

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...

80

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 >
80

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 >
75

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 >
75

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Silly and spectacular, and fun.

Read Full Review >
63

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 >
63

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.

Read Full Review >
63

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 >
60

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 >
50

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 >
50

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 >
50

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 >
50

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 >
50

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 >
50

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 >
50

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 >
50

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 >
42

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 >
42

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A monstrous disappointment.

Read Full Review >
40

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 >
40

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 >
40

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

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

Read Full Review >
40

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 >
40

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]

38

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 >
38

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 >
38

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 >
33

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

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

Read Full Review >
30

Washington Post Desson Thomson

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

Read Full Review >
30

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

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

Read Full Review >
30

Village Voice Ed Park

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

Read Full Review >
25

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 >
25

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Here's a shrieking bore of a horror flick.

Read Full Review >
25

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 >
20

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 >
20

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 >
12

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 >
10

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

A work of staggering stupidity.

Read Full Review >
0

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 >
0

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.

Read more user comments >

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use