Fabulous Films, out now

Employed by the Catholic Church, Gabriel Van Helsing is sent to destroy Dracula and protect the Valerious family’s last remaining members…

It always seems to me that whoever it was that introduced director Stephen Sommers to the possibilities of CGI deprived us of some great movies. His Deep Rising is a great B movie but focuses on Treat Williams and the other characters; the original Mummy uses CG to good effect, particularly for the Mummy himself. But then you get the second Mummy film and its appalling Scorpion King at the end… and after that comes Van Helsing. (To be fair, his next film, GI Joe, uses it much better.)

It’s a fun movie but it’s totally and utterly in thrall to its CG component (as Sommers, to his credit, acknowledges in the commentary). Sometimes that’s used well (the flying vampires); other times – and it doesn’t help that Mr Hyde is the first example we see, a prime case in point – it isn’t. Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale feel as if they’re lost in a CG equivalent of Roger Rabbit’s Toon Town, where anything is possible, and any vague connection to reality and grounding is lost.

And yet it starts so well, with a beautifully constructed homage to the Universal movies of the 1930s (which by chance I’ve been rewatching recently), but it becomes a rollercoaster ride all too quickly, with no chance to take a breath. In one of the very early documentaries about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg noted that he had to add a short scene after the end of the ceiling-crushing sequence to allow the audience to recover before he threw them into the next high stakes section; Sommers ignores that idea and goes from one menace to another.

Jackman, Beckinsale and a deliciously over the top Richard Roxburgh do their best with the material with David Wenham, Kevin J O’Connor and Shuler Hensley supporting well. Alan Silvestri’s score is definitely one of the highlights of the piece – as is the featurette about his work.

The Blu-ray has multiple other extras – another commentary from the three monsters, which is actually far more informative than Sommers’ own, as well as pieces on the various elements of the film – but all come from the 2009 original release.

Verdict: A sumptuous looking movie that too often forgets that CGI is a tool to be use to tell a story. 6/10

Paul Simpson

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