10 High Budget Horror Movies With Terrible CGI

Van Helsing holds prominent and cherished status in the movies-so-terrible-they're-great category. While the merits of Van Helsing have been debated upon critical reappraisal of the fantasy horror, the film's reputation for possessing some of the worst CGI ever seen remains firmly intact.

Adopting a "throw everything at the wall and something might stick" approach to filmmaking, Van Helsing manages to cram every literary monster you can think of into a 131-minute run for Hugh Jackman to scowl menacingly at/engage in witty repartee with, before firing off bolts from a medieval crossbow-machine gun combination in their direction. It's a ridiculous romp of a film and a thoroughly enjoyable one - unless one happens to be a passionate CGI enthusiast.

Van Helsing was shot on a whopping budget of approximately $165 million, which almost beggars belief when some of the effects within the film look like they cost less than $165. Of particular note are the werewolf sequences, with Jackman's transformation from human to lycanthrope in the film's climactic fight with Dracula - where his skin literally falls off - being notably hard to watch with a straight face. Most viewers had cracked long before, when Van Helsing battles a calamitously animated version of Mr Hyde in the film's introduction.

Think 1990s era arcade game characters bashing each other and you're not too far off the onscreen result. Considering the film essentially revolves around characters that require CGI to do them justice, one wonders what on earth the budget for the latter was spent on.