Van Helsing is intended as the mother of all action-adventure horror films. It's very much in the style of The Mummy, with heavy use of computer graphics and the same director behind the camera. It has a hunky leading man in the form of Hugh Jackman, who has taken on the title role as Dracula's mythical nemesis. You can't fault that casting. But there is a rich smell of excess when it comes to the villains. Thanks to the gung-ho insanity of Universal Studios, in this film Van Helsing goes up against not one but seven of their famous screen creatures - Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster and others!

The creations of Stoker and Shelley are deleriously mixed together in the same scenes for the first time since 1945's House of Dracula. Not only that, but all the monsters have been re-imagined in a new form, often with the help of those headache-inducing computer graphics. It is one of those delicious concepts that lives or dies on the quality of the script.

Uh-oh - I hate to say it, but Van Helsing is an awful film. Really, unforgivably dreadful. The primary error is that nobody seems to have written a script - you get the impression that the director got his three year old son to write up a lot of ideas, and then pulled them out of a hat on each day of filming to decide what to shoot.

Dracula's brides attack, Jackman finds himself in a room full of alien pods, he is engulfed in special effects… there is no pace, just a series of immature set pieces which quickly grow tiring. Hugh Jackman even looks tired. He visibly tires during the film. It seems impossible, but it's true. Watch those bags under his eyes.

This is frustrating because Van Helsing sporadically shows flickers of potential. A prologue where Helsing battles Mr. Hyde in front of an unfinished Eiffel tower is inventive and engaging, and the monochrome beginning sequence with Dracula and Frankenstein facing off shows a healthy regard for the film's roots in the old Universal horror series.

Sadly the good moments are far outweighed, in fact drowned, by the poor ones. The experience of watching Van Helsing is like being chained to a chair, forced to watch all the old Universal horror films speeded up, with a mad orchestra being blasted into your ears, with a handsome friend in the corner pulling silly facial expressions, being forced to eat candy floss, as he plays on a Playstation, whilst you are smacked in the head repeatedly by someone standing behind you. For hours.

Save yourselves - if you want to see a great action film that promises nothing except good old fashioned entertainment, then save your money for Spider-Man 2. If the kids want to see something colourful and imaginative then rent them the dubbed version of Spirited Away. But truly, except for those who enjoy torture, Van Helsing has nothing for anybody. It is a film without fangs.

Jason Theodorou, June 4th 2004