Hugh Jackman's 2000s Action Horror Movie Should Have Launched A Franchise
The premise of Stephen Sommers' 2004 action horror film "Van Helsing" is like something out of a 12-year-old's wildest sugar-rush fantasies. Hugh Jackman plays Gabriel Van Helsing, an updated version of Abraham Van Helsing from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula," this time serving as a professional monster hunter for a secret human-protection society called Knights of the Holy Order. Jackman's Van Helsing is young, sexy, and equipped with a large panoply of steampunk monster-hunting weapons. He's a franchise hero in a movie that never launched a franchise.
At the beginning of the movie, Van Helsing slays Dr. Jekyll (Stephen Fisher) before spending the rest of the film dealing with the machinations of Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), who wants to steal the secrets of creating life from Frankenstein's monster (Shuler Hensley). Kate Beckinsale also co-stars as a young woman of Romanian descent whom Van Halsing must protect, and Jackman and Beckinsale have never looked better in any movie.
"Van Helsing" is a monster mash along the lines of "House of Dracula," but it's silly enough to be comparable to the underrated Rankin/Bass Halloween film "Mad Monster Party?" (despite being infused with ridiculous action scenes, overwrought writing, and expensive VFX). It was a modest graveyard smash, making over $300 million on a $170 million budget. Of course, with a budget like that, it remains one of the most expensive horror movies ever made.
In a better world, "Van Helsing" would have launched a long series of films. I can easily picture a parallel universe where "Ven Helsing" was a bigger hit than it was, and Jackman returned to theaters every two or three years to fight another famous monster. Or maybe Dracula, as he so often does, rises from the grave repeatedly to battle Van Helsing again and again.
Van Helsing is a fun monster mash, and it was a modest graveyard smash
Why wasn't it a franchise? Perhaps "Van Helsing" was a little too eager right out of the gate, as it involved Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, a Wolf Man, Dracula's succubus brides, and Jekyll & Hyde. After that, you only have the Invisible Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Bride remaining when it comes to the classic Universal Pictures movie monsters.
Indeed, one can see why Universal Pictures would want to make something like "Van Helsing." The studio has long been associated with its monster movies, which originally saw their heyday in the 1930s and 1940s (although "Creature from the Black Lagoon" arrived in the 1950s). There have been innumerable films featuring Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, et al, but Universal had an enormous hit with its 1999 film "The Mummy," which was more like an Indiana Jones-inflected adventure movie than a horror film. Stephen Sommers had directed that movie, in addition to helming 2001's "The Mummy Returns" and co-writing the 2002 spin-off "The Scorpion King," so "Van Helsing" was clearly Universal's attempt to get the rest of its Monster canon into the action adventure mix.
And it's mostly successful. The film is high-energy and boasts a lot of fun steampunk visuals. Personally, I like the design of Frankenstein's monster, as he sports a large, flickering lightning screen in his chest. Plus, as mentioned, Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale are utterly dazzling, reminding us why they're movie stars in the first place. And there is certainly nothing wrong with Dracula leading a monster mini-army in his quest for eternal life, as culled from the study of Dr. Frankenstein (Samuel West).
What did critics think of Van Helsing?
To offer a bit of comic relief, Stephen Sommers regular Kevin J. O'Connor plays Igor. O'Connor was also in "The Mummy" and Sommers' sea beast film "Deep Rising," and he even had a cameo in the director's "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra." Clearly, Sommers knows how to helm expensive, high-energy B-movies.
"Van Helsing" didn't become a full-blown feature film franchise, but there was a 33-minute animated prequel called "Van Helsing: The London Assignment," which once again starred Jackman and detailed Van Helsing's dealings with Jekyll & Hyde. Back when the movie hit theaters, it was further reported that Universal had indeed begun developing a sequel, only to scrap the idea when the film failed to become a big enough hit. Later, in 2020, it emerged that producer James Wan and "Overlord" director Julius Avery were working on a new "Van Helsing" movie, but that project appears to have since fallen through.
It might not have helped matters that "Van Helsing" got pretty awful reviews from critics. For example, Mick LaSalle haaaated the movie, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle:
"The movie is numbingly hyperactive. Here, vampires can attack day or night, and they do, relentlessly, particularly Dracula's three wives, merry female bats who delight in taunting their victims. In between bat attacks, the slender yet convoluted story doesn't exactly unfold. It just gets announced now and then, as the characters state the premise of scenes to each other as though at a pitch meeting."
He finished his review by writing that "Van Helsing" "has no more art than what a chimpanzee might do with an Etch-a-Sketch." It could have been reviews like that that kept interest in a sequel quite low.