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Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

Directed by Rian Johnson

Cinematography by Steve Yedlin

#Wake Up Dead Man #Rian Johnson #Steve Yedlin #A Knives Out Mystery #Josh O'Connor #Josh Brolin #Daniel Craig #Benoit Blanc #Bob Ducsay #Nathan Johnson #Netflix #T-Street Productions #Ram Bergman Productions #mystery film #Movies Frames #movie in pictures #movie in frames #movie frames #movie #movies #film frames #film #films #cinematography #filmography #filmmaking #2025

Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson (2025)

#Rian Johnson #Daniel Craig #Josh O'Connor #Glenn Close #Josh Brolin #Mila Kunis #Jeremy Renner #Kerry Washington #Andrew Scott #Cailee Spaeny #Daryl McCormack #Thomas Haden Church #Jeffrey Wright #Steve Yedlin #Nathan Johnson #Bob Ducsay #2025

Halloween Movie of the day: Van Hellsing (2004)

It is the late XIVth century, and the Vatican is in a state of emergency. They've got notice that Count Dracula is trying to capture Dr. Frankeinstein's greatest experiment: an undead creature who defies the laws of life and death. To handle this emergency they summon Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman), a member of the Knights of the Holy order, skilled in the art of hunting the creatures of the night... and smashing ancient church artifacts in the process. Accompained by the well informed but not so pious friar Carl (David Wenham), he embarks on a quest to get to the creature first and help Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale) to fulfill her family's oath as the last standing member. For her ancestors to enter heaven, the king of the vampires must be slain once and for all. Directed by Stepehen Sommers of The Mummy (1999) fame, this monster mash revives the core unspoken principle of those old Universal crossovers: the amount of monsters in the story is inversely proportional to the quality of the script. And considering we have appearances by Frankenstein, Dracula and his brides, the Wolfman and Mr. Hyde(albeit this last one has a very short role)... yeah. The movie is going for popcorn fun and little else. But dang it if the end result isn't fun, with moments of great visual flair, humorous dialogue and imaginative action set pieces, even if the CGI shows it's age at various points. At the same time, it suffers from fairly thin characterizations. While the performances are overall enjoyably over the top (and surprisingly heartfelt with Shiler Hensley's take on the creature), the camp doesn't quite make up for how underwhelming some of the character arcs end up coming across. Much as Sommers tries, he fails to re-capture the magic of The Mummy. That said, there's still quite a lot of fun to be had with this movie as the closest thing to a Castlevania live-action. Just temper your expectations accordingly.

Frankly, I have a complicated relationship with this movie. It has some really cool bits, I love the monster designs (Frankenstein's Monster looks badass and it has one of the best werewolves in movie history), and there's a fun premise here. I want to love this movie more but I… can't. Every time I watch it I get the same impression: it didn't meet its full potential. With the card played right it could've been a franchise or at least get a sequel but it wasn't meant to be.

Ah well, they did swing for the fences when it came out so props for the effort, with a healthy amount of other related productions that keep the original cast of the film. The animated prequel Van Hellsing: The London Asignment is in some ways an improvement over the actual film by having a more focused story and emphasizing the horror elements a little more (it's not just my bias for the genre, OK? Making the villain horrifying and threatening is a good way to raise the stakes and have a strong focal point). The animation quality is rather uneven though. Some shots look fantastic and are very ambitious, while others do look like… well, a direct to DVD production from the mid 2000's.

On another note, the PlayStation 2 videogame adaptation by Vivendi Universal games is surprisingly solid too. It's a budget clone of Devil May Cry with nowhere near the ammount of sauce (though to be fair, very little does) but all things considered it's still a fine action game if you're in the mood for that gameplay style but don't want to deal with the obscene difficulty of the Capcom franchise it's borrowing from.