THERE are evil creatures afoot who wish to unleash great terror on humanity - this film.

Van Helsing is the first of this summer's cinema blockbusters and let's hope it's the worst.

How a film with so much promise - all the big monsters and their nemesis together - could so spectacularly misfire is a mystery that even Carl, Van Helsing's bookish sidekick, would have difficulty figuring out.

This is so wrong on so many levels that it's probably destined to become a cult hit with people gathering to marvel at just how truly bad it is.

But less of the sweeping criticism, lets get down to the specifics of what is wrong with this film.

The most glaringly obvious problem is the shocking special effects. Even a child wouldn't be fooled into thinking Mr Hyde, Dracula's flying brides, the giant werewolves or any of the other evil beasties were really there so it's pretty insulting that director/writer Stephen Sommers thinks that he can palm this rubbish off on the adult market that this film is aimed at.

The transformations of Dracula and co to their bloodsucking faces have to be some of the worst scenes of this sort committed to film. The monsters are about as scary as Plasticene, which is hardly surprising as that's what they appear to be made of.

This is a big budget film so there's no excuse for the creatures to be so unbelievable and because they are central to the film their acute naffness has a domino effect on the rest of the movie, bringing it all down.

Although, that said, even if the 'special' effects were better there'd still be some major flaws. And the acting is a major one of them. Dracula's brides take joint first place for shockingly bad performances. Their shrieking, swaying, dramatic arm-waving and shonky middle-European accents are in a league entirely of their own.

Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious does make a valiant play for the title of worst accent but against such stiff competition she never really stood a chance.

And the story does nothing to redeem the film. The whole plot strand about Dracula having a super-evil plan falls flat and, critically, forgets to be scary. The romance between Van Helsing and Anna is too obvious to be compelling and the twist about how Dracula can be killed is badly played out.

Add to this the obvious plundering of other, better films, like X-Men, Aliens and The Matrix and the laughably lame ending which is sure to go down in celluloid history as one of the worst ever, and you've got a real turkey on your hands.

Hugh Jackman does his best to save the film with his charismatic hero but his efforts are the equivalent of trying to refloat the Titanic with a rubber ring.

Rating: 2/10