Review: "Van Helsing - Season One"

NANKIN, Michael, et.al. (Dirs.), “Van Helsing – Season One”, Universal Pictures/Echo Lake Entertainment/Nomadic Pictures/Dynamic Television/SyFy,

Note to me: stop buying what the SyFy Channel is shovelling.

This is the third series which I’ve wandered into from this production house and things still haven’t clicked. “Haven” was horrible; “Helix” was hideous; but this - this – is a new low. From my current perspective of having been thrice-bitten, I can see a definite picture emerging and it speaks volumes as to how the SyFy people put these things together. It’s definitely a camel by committee.

I should really have baulked at the name: to date, anything with the name ‘Van Helsing’ in the title has been a load of rubbish, so that should have been a clue. I did, however, entertain some vague hope that it would tie back into Stoker’s novel at some point – other than just being a story about vampires – but no, no it didn’t. It has simply paved the way for some Millennial reader to pick up (or download) a copy of Dracula and go, “Hey! There’s an old dude in here named after that chick from that SyFy Channel show!” You can hear me groaning already.

This is a vampire story. Even better (I’m being sarcastic here) it’s also a zombie story, because the producers want to have their cake and eat it too. In this iteration, there are two levels of vampires – the ‘Feeders’, who are all smart and think-y, and the ‘Ferals’, who are not. Our story concerns a group of people holed-up inside a hospital: at the start, there’s just one guy – a US marine – and a vampire in a cage, who he feeds on his blood through a tube stuck into his arm. Also in the facility, is an unconscious woman lying on an operating table in her underwear, whom the marine refers to as “Sleeping Beauty”. His mission, as he often repeats from this time forward, is to protect Sleeping Beauty and keep “the Doc” (that is, the vampire) alive. It’s the one note of this unprepossessing character and, by God, he sticks to it!

Other characters pile into this well-defended hideaway, depending upon whose turn it is to take over the script. One of our marine’s soldier buddies returns unexpectedly with a bunch of humans whom he has rescued while out in the wilds of downtown Seattle. There’s a deaf guy (the ubiquitous Chris Heyerdahl), a black kid with street smarts, three women – one hard-nosed, one about to have a nervous breakdown, and one who gets killed horribly pretty much immediately – and one angry guy who just wants to get out and find his wife, Wendy (and is prevented from doing so, for reasons). It’s the quintessential George Romero set-up and you can see where everything is headed.

As expected, zom-, er, “vampires” break in and cause chaos, and in the fall-out, we discover that Sleeping Beauty’s blood turns vampires back into human beings. Quelle surprise! And then, we’re off to the races…

The problem with these shows is that they don’t seem to have an over-arching storyline. It seems that, with each episode, a new writer and director get on board and says “Okay, now we’re going to do things MY way”, with the result that nothing gets resolved, nothing gains focus and nothing makes any sense. In fact, the whole show reeks of commitment issues, especially amongst the undead. Each time we see the vamps doing their thing, the scenes come across with an air of embarrassment as if the actors can’t quite believe what it is that they’re being made to do/say/wear. ‘Uneasy’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.

As for the rest of the cast, they’re all two-dimensional and less than edifying. Our heroine – the one that the show is all about - is completely unsympathetic. While laying down her back-story, I felt that there wasn’t another person in this program I could relate to less. Even the one-note marine was more relatable. In terms of catching our sympathy, she may as well have been made of Teflon; as it is, she's mostly wood. The key word here is ‘bland’.

The politics is all over the shop too. At one point, the marine walks in on Sleeping Beauty as she indulges in the statutory ‘post vampire episode’ shower, declaring that, with the shortage of water “it makes sense” that everyone doubles-up on bathing. Hmmm. It's really just a ploy to get the two lead actors to nude up. When we first meet her in a flashback, Sleeping Beauty beats up her best friend’s boyfriend when she discovers him maltreating her; this devolves into a lesbian-overtoned invitation from the girlfriend to get drunk and hang out, prevented only by the fact that Sleeping Beauty has birthday duties to execute for her completely alienated daughter (much eye-rolling, here). It feels like the writers are trying to push too many of their own personal envelopes vicariously throughout this show.

Then there’s Sleeping Beauty’s “super-powers”. We know that her blood can turn vamps human. Okay, that’s fine. However, sometimes it works when the vamps bite her; other times it works when she bites them. Sometimes it knocks her out; sometimes the vampires simply die. Occasionally, she displays Wolverine-level regeneration; at other times she’s comatose for days while healing. Again, pick one thing and stick with it, people; don’t try to be all things to everyone.

Another inconsistency is all of the booby-traps and gadgets that our one-note marine constructs about the hospital. In an early episode, one set-designer decided to place a dinky little windmill made of scraps on the roof of the building; in a later episode, that prop gets trashed in a rooftop fight and, suddenly, it’s revealed that this piss-poor object was the only thing providing them with power. Excuse me? That piece of crap couldn’t have powered the bulb from a torch, much less the racks of batteries required to power the banks of UV lights keeping the undead outside! Along with this, we get moments where our marine points significantly to a point in space for the benefit of his companions, while nodding and smiling and going “huh? Huh? You see what I mean?” Apparently, this is him showing his friends a booby-trap, in the hope that they’ll avoid it in future. Not that they need to: despite an implicit plethora of these devices, not one of them is set off by a human or a vampire to any real effect. (One of them does almost cut an annoying child in half, but I was left wondering how she couldn't have seen it from across the room. In the end, I just assumed they were being equal-opportunity: if you're gonna have a deaf character, you may as well have a blind one too.)

The background to this mess is that Yellowstone National Park, which we all know is built on top of a super-volcano, blows its stack and covers the Earth with clouds of ash. This prevents daylight from hitting the ground and so all the vampires – who have been living amongst us, unnoticed, all along – press their advantage and begin wholesale eating and enslaving humanity. However, before we even reach the halfway point of this mess, the ash begins to clear and the vampires are suddenly on the run. There are a few problems with this: first, if Yellowstone blows up, we’ll all know about it because that’ll be it – all over, Red Rover; secondly, when volcanoes of this size erupt, the ash they emit stays in the atmosphere for years, even decades, not a handy fortnight. London had blazing red sunsets for ages after Krakatau blew, and the Tunguska Impact (which we all know was Azathoth paying us a house call, right?) had similar effects too. So, we learn that science is the first casualty of a vampire/zombie invasion. But hey! It’s all taking place in trendy downtown Seattle so that’s cool, right? Right?

Whatever benefits this show has it more than makes up for it in the tally of its ‘lacks’. It lacks heart; it lacks character; it lacks consistency; it lacks anything which may endear it to its viewers; and it lacks sense. Other than that, it’s just dull. Avoid it.

Two Tentacled Horrors.