10 Redeeming Elements In Otherwise Awful Movies

For a film with such a notorious reputation, Van Helsing really isn't all hat bad. It's a bizarre, goofy, borderline unintelligible mess that wastes an extremely talented cast and plays into the worst tendencies of early 2000s Action movie tropes, but it's far from the worst example of that (see Underworld for a worse example). But it does hold a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes, and often comes up as an example of what happens when you lean too heavily on CGI for sequences that could do just fine with creature effects.

But one area in which this film excels is in creating a unique mood for its world. It's like what would happen if Bram Stoker wrote a pulpy comic book version of his work, and that leaped fully formed onto the screen. And what really makes this mood work is the eclectic original score, courtesy of Alan Silvestri.

In places it sounds like a generic action movie score, but on the whole this soundtrack succeeds for many idiosyncratic choices Silvestri made in his instrument choice. The main theme features heavy use of a bağlama, a Turkish instrument that spices up the main theme of the film and gives the soundscape of this film a dynamic personality that rubs off on the film itself. It is truly a delight to listen to.