Today on TV: this fantasy actor cost 160 (!) million dollars – and is an insult to all horror fans

It just sounded too good: Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolf Man meet on screen in a large-scale fantasy break in blockbuster guise – and ‘The Mummy’ creator Stephen Sommers stages the spectacle too! “Van Helsing“, which airs today, November 23, 2023 at 8:15 PM on Vox, has become not only laughable, but also an insult to fans of classic horror and horror cinema.

Of course, if you still want to see ‘Van Helsing’ but don’t feel like watching commercial breaks, you can easily get the film on Blu-ray, DVD and 4K from online retailers like Amazon:

That’s what Van Helsing is about

Dr. Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) hunts for supernatural phenomena on behalf of the Vatican. He often puts his life in danger, but thanks to his training and a lot of extraordinary equipment, he is well prepared for all kinds of monsters. After I saw Mr. had already met Hyde, the brutal, monstrous alter ego of Dr. After Jekyll (Stephen Fisher) stays in Paris, Van Helsing is sent to the eerie Transylvania.

Here he must support the Valerious siblings Anna (Kate Beckinsale) and Velkan (Will Kemp) in their battle against the sinister vampire Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh). Van Helsing must initially rely on Anna, as her brother has become an uncontrollable beast himself after a werewolf attack. But Anna isn’t keen on the idea of ​​fighting side by side with a stranger either…

A soulless room full of horrors

As a big fan of the classic Universal monsters, if you are presented with a film like ‘Van Helsing’, you may feel sick. The idea of ​​bringing all the iconic horror figures around Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolf Man under one roof is incredibly appealing, because the tonality could have developed in any direction. Stephen Sommers, who not only directed the film but also wrote the screenplay, apparently has no idea what to do with all the potential.

With ‘Van Helsing’, Stephen Sommers does not lovingly handle the classic horror creatures in order to translate them into the modern cinema landscape. Instead, the $160 million fantasy flop is a demystification of timeless gothic novels and stories full of random action scenes. If you were to recognize a parodic approach here, you could certainly work with such a deconstructive approach.

However, Stephen Sommers is far from leaving an anarchist note. We are driven into the wall – completely seriously at full speed – with Richard Roxburgh, probably the worst Dracula of all time and with Shuler Hensley (as Frankenstein’s monster) and Will Kemp (as wolf people) two uncharismatic firecrackers stumbling through the sets, which at first glance seem at least opulent and quite atmospheric, either in bad CGI or in embarrassing carnival attire.

As Van Helsing, Hugh Jackman is no longer the cultivated doctor whose specialty is vampirism, but a weapon on two legs who comes around the corner with a fully automatic crossbow in tow with such an effort to keep cool that it sometimes makes your face blush . shyness. In the end, all these originally great figures are just boring transfers betrayed by this uninteresting, cheaply beaten up monster trash. “Van Helsing” is a joke and doesn’t even fit into higher society.