Tuesday 3 January 2017

Van Helsing (2004)



Van Helsing is a fantasy/thriller movie based on the mythical characters of the past. Whether the mythical characters existed is of course only known to god, as with time, knowledge of the past becomes more obscure. While there are many movies made about vampires such as vampire-romance films (which personally I despise) and also vampire-comedy films. I find most of such films a waste of time and effort. Do not misinterpret me, there have been a few vampire-comedy-romance films which I have enjoyed such as Dark Shadows and Vampires Suck. Van Helsing is a marvelous film which depicts the relation between the mythical characters such as Frankenstein, vampires, werewolves, and many more among themselves, with humans and with the notorious Van Helsing, a man who hunted monsters. I loved the direction, cinematography and shooting locations. I don't know whether they have used sets or actual locations, but the scenery is amazing and adds to the eerie ambiance of the movie. Transylvania is shown scarier than ever.

The film starts out with a scene many years ago, showing Dr. Victor Frankenstein and Dracula. Dracula kills the doctor as he wishes to use his reanimation technique for sinister purposes. Centuries later, Van Helsing, a notorious monster hunter, is assigned the task to save Anna and her family from Dracula and his vampire brides in Transylvania. Anna belongs to a family of pure blood kings who were hunted down by Dracula for generations. Van Helsing who suffers from memory loss is clueless about his past, but hopes that he can get information from Transylvania. There he finds out that he had a past connection with Dracula and Transylvania. He accompanies Anna on a quest to kill Dracula and his brides and stop him from reanimating his vampire progeny.



The film is one of the best vampire mythology films along with Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. I will give a review on the latter in another post as it is a marvelous film. The best parts of Van Helsing is probably the initial fight between Van Helsing and Mr. Hyde. The experiments at Dracula's place are also fascinating. This movie is not recommended for children below 10 years or the faint-hearted viewers, because I assure you, some scenes can be visually upsetting such as Dracula's brides. They are so weird and scary to some extent. When I watched the movie about 10 years ago, I remembers nothing or noone but the female vampire monsters and their disturbing avatar changes. Besides this, the movie is an amazing watch and will provide you a great movie experience.

Regards.

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