April 25th - V is for Van Helsing

April 25th - V is for Van Helsing

 

This is one of the other reasons why I didn’t want to watch Underworld yesterday. I don’t like watching too many of these action movies in a row because I usually like my action spaced out so that it’s a treat to watch people throw each other around. So here we have just that, a movie with action and story, just what I need today.

On the front of the DVD case, Van Helsing totes that it has “non-stop action,” which is a quality that most action movies without plots use t justify their movie. The thing is, this movie has a story, and I think it’s one of the best fantasy action stories in a while (in movie form of course). They put some interesting twists on characters that most people already know such as Frankenstein’s monster and Mr. Hyde. This movie isn’t afraid to show just how monstrous some of these classic characters can be, and not just in the physical sense. This film does such a good job at making you care about the story that is threading all these classic characters together.

Though the story strives to combine the legends of several classic horror monsters/villains, it also tries t explain why Van Helsing is tangled up in all of this, and this is where I think the movie lacks a bit. There is some really vague backstory quickly thrust under a rug at the beginning of the film that mysteriously becomes unimportant the minute action related pops up. The thing is, if you’re going to give us no details about a character’s background, DON’T MAKE IT AN IMPORTANT PLOT POINT LATER! I still don’t understand what Dracula was talking about, but you’ll have to watch it to find out.

SO, that being said, this is still a really good movie. I can over look that whole backstory thing (much like the movie does) and still find that the rest of the movie holds together. The action has enough weight to it, the characters aren’t dumb and can think outside the box of way to kill vampires, and the acting felt real enough to make me, at least, care about the characters. This has to be one of my favorite action movies of all time. 5 out of 5.

Van Helsing cover from IMDB
Stars off of Google Images