Bad, stupid movie. It meets most or all of the criteria necessary to be considered among the all-time bad.
* Essentially unlimited budget -- no excuses about how I couldn't do the effects I wanted, or shoot on the locations I wanted
* Written and directed by the same person -- clearly someone else needed to smack him once or twice and stop him from doing some of the most egregious things. A pet project gone horribly awry. Kind of a shame, since 'The Mummy' was good, the sequel was ok, and 'Deep Rising' is a guilty pleasure
* Tried way too hard to be to be too many things -- sometimes it wanted to be camp, sometimes spoof, sometimes tongue-in-cheek romp, sometimes horror, etc. A really inconsistent tone, it failed at all of them.
* Way to many things that were stupid, over the top, or just plain nonsensical when they didn't have to be. Contrast Bruce Willis using the fire hose to swing down from the roof with the Spiderman-esque swinging in Van Helsing, for example. One is over the top, but still plausible and consistent with the setting of the movie. The other is just stupid and lazy.
I saw this with a bunch of my friends (gamers and genre fans all) for my birthday last year, and every single one of us hated it. And we're the ones that just watched Highlander 2, Speed 2, and Caddyshack 2 in one sitting, so you know our tolerance for bad cinema is legendary
