Feeling old? As of May, 2025, Van Helsing turned 21—old enough to drink in America. Stephen Sommers’ 2004 monster-hunting epic, starring Hugh Jackman as the haunted Gabriel Van Helsing, isn’t merely a movie; it’s a gauntlet thrown at today’s woke garbage media. As we mourn the demise of unfiltered cinema, let’s pour one out for a film that revelled in its gothic excess, unburdened by the DEI mandates & diversity quotas that strangle modern Hollywood.
Van Helsing was a beast of its era, a $160 million gamble that didn’t kowtow to social agendas. Its cast—Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh—was uniformly western, its Transylvanian setting a deliberate nod to the Eurocentric roots of Universal’s monster lore. There was no tokenism, no forced inclusivity to appease Kalergi Plan checklists. The film’s heroes & villains were carved from the same primal stone: rugged, flawed, & driven by personal vendettas, not identity politics. Jackman’s Van Helsing, a loner with a cursed past, didn’t preach unity or LGBTbhvgwskvhdbfv+ representation; he wielded crossbows & gutted werewolves. Beckinsale’s Anna Valerious, all leather & fury, wasn’t a girlboss caricature—she was a warrior, full stop. This was storytelling that trusted its audience to care about character, not demographics.
The plot was a jagged blade. Van Helsing, a Vatican enforcer, hunts Dracula to thwart a vampire apocalypse. Joined by Anna & Carl, a sardonic friar, he carves through Transylvania’s shadows—werewolves, harpies, Frankenstein’s creature. The film doesn’t flinch from its body count or its moral murkiness. Sommers, unbound by today’s obsession with “sensitivity,” leaned into horror’s raw edge: grotesque vampire spawn, a castle ball dripping with menace, a finale where salvation demands sacrifice. Alan Silvestri’s score, all jagged brass & choral dread, amplified the stakes. The CG still carries a gritty charm, whilst the practical effects—slimy, tactile—recall an era when monsters felt real.
Critics savaged it, branding it a 24% Rotten Tomatoes mess. Too loud, too chaotic, they sneered. But their scorn missed the mark. Van Helsing wasn’t chasing Oscars or even applause for woke “moral” grandstanding; it was a love letter to Universal’s 1930s monster flicks, remixed with rock n’ roll bravado. It didn’t pander with diverse ensembles or sanitised violence to court global markets. It was defiantly niche, a gothic fever dream for those who craved stakes through the heart, not stakeholder approval.
Today, Van Helsing is a spectre. Hollywood’s current dogma—where every blockbuster must reflect a curated rainbow of faces & neutered themes—would never greenlight its unapologetic homogeneity or its gleeful carnage. The film’s steampunk arsenal & monster-slaying ethos feel like a lost dialect, drowned out by franchises obsessed with “urban relevance.” Netizens lament this shift, mourning a time when films could be reckless. A reboot? Unlikely. Universal’s “Dark Universe” collapsed under its own focus-grouped weight, & Van Helsing’s defiance doesn’t fit the 2025 mould.
At 21, Van Helsing stands as a tombstone for a bolder era. It’s a film that didn’t apologise, didn’t diversify for clout, didn’t dilute its bloodlust. In a world of committee-driven goyslop, it’s a reminder of what we’ve lost: stories that dared to be themselves, consequences be damned. So here’s a toast—absinthe—to a film that hunted monsters without kneeling to them.
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