Frankensteinby Mary Shelley Van Helsing is a 2004 action horror film written and directed by Stephen Sommers.

The eponymous character was inspired by the Dutch vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing from Irish author Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

A year later, Gabriel Van Helsing, a monster hunter who works for the Knights of the Holy Order, an organization that protects mankind, travels to Notre-Dame de Paris and kills Dr. Jekyll after a brawl with Mr. Hyde.

Van Helsing remembers nothing before he was found on the steps of a church nearly dead, and hopes to earn pardon for his forgotten sins and regain his memory.

At the Order's Vatican City headquarters, Van Helsing is tasked with traveling to Transylvania, destroying Dracula, and protecting Anna and Velkan Valerious, the last of an ancient Romanian family.

They stumble upon Dracula's plan to duplicate Frankenstein's experiments to give life to thousands of his undead children, using Velkan as a conduit.

A fragment, which the Cardinal gave Van Helsing back in Vatican City, opens a path to Dracula's castle.

Van Helsing, fighting the curse, sends Anna and Carl to retrieve the cure, killing Igor in the process.

Dracula and Van Helsing turn into their bestial forms and battle, while Frankenstein's monster helps Anna escape Aleera.

Whilst both return to their human forms, Dracula reveals that Van Helsing is nothing more than a reincarnation of the archangel Gabriel who killed him and offers to restore his memory.

Van Helsing refuses and kills Dracula after reverting back to his werewolf form, triggering his brood's deaths.

Frankenstein's monster leaves town, and Van Helsing sees Anna's spirit reuniting with her family in Heaven.

[10] James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave an extremely negative review, rating the film half a star out of four and calling it "the worst would-be summer blockbuster since Battlefield Earth".

[11] Bill Muller of The Arizona Republic gave it a rating of two out of five, explaining that the film "looks like a movie assembled by a room full of computer geeks munching Doritos and playing Wolfenstein in between stints of designing Dracula's fangs".

[12] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle greatly disliked the film: "Writer-director Stephen Sommers (...) throws together plot strains from various horror movies and stories and tries to muscle things along with flash and dazzle.

[13] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4 stating that "at the outset, we may fear Sommers is simply going for f/x overkill, but by the end, he has somehow succeeded in assembling all his monsters and plot threads into a high-voltage climax.

[22] By November 2015, Jon Spaihts and Eric Heisserer signed onto the project as co-screenwriters, though Cruise left his role with the film.

[24] Following the poor critical and financial reception to the film, Universal restructured their plan for rebooted adaptations of their Classic Monsters to be stand-alone in nature.