This Hellboy is neither shocking nor camp despite its R-rated bloody beheadings and dismemberments. It’s a laughable mess. Writer Andrew Cosby and Director Neil Marshall clearly believes the audience has an unquenchable lust for grotesque monsters, evil sorcery and ultra-bloody murder.
This is just a 2 hour slog reimagining Mike Mignola’s graphic novel origin story, drawing very little from Ron Perlman as the title character in the 2004 original directed by Guillermo Del Toro.
Beneath all the gore, lousy lines and over-done CGI monsters, this is a film that could have made some intelligent statements. Hellboy is a demon, yet he is a hero that refuses to give in to his darker instincts. He was raised with morality so the issue of nurture vs. nature could have made this a smarter piece of work.
The film begins with an interesting idea. Back in the time of The Round Table, King Arthur uses Excalibur to dispatch the evil supernatural Blood Queen, Nimue (Milla Jovovich). Nimue’s head is still talking trash as it’s placed into a box. That head and the other body parts were buried in separate boxes throughout England.
Fast forward 1,500 years. Nimue’s demonic followers, led by the preposterous angry boar/human, Gruagach find the boxes and are putting her back together for another run a world domination. The CGI used to create Gruagach makes him look like a failed Muppet. There is one fun scene where Jovovich sitting on a couch, only partially reconstructed, is clicking through TV shows and complaining about stupid reality TV.
All that stands between Nimue and the End-of-Times is that demon/human with the reddish skin and sawed-off horns; Hellboy. David Harbour isn’t as bad as the rest in this movie. He’s the good guy with a likable, but gruff, snarky demeanor. We liked him having no problem showing off his middle-age paunch. The CGI over his face almost obscures all resemblance to Harbour. He has a worn, tired look even though he’s portrayed as virtually indestructible, evidenced in his battle with three Giants. In the best fight sequence of the movie, Hellboy is slammed, mashed, stabbed, telling himself “This is gonna hurt,” but keeps coming back for more.
The sound-effects department must have worked over-time to keep up with the incessant pounding that Hellboy (David Harbour – Stranger Things) takes embellished with the squishy sounds of impalements and bone-cracking. The music track is also disappointing metal-esque music accompanying the incessant battles.
Hellboy’s posse includes kid Alice (Sasha Lane) who has psychic powers. She can channel the recently deceased who appear as apparitions that spew out of her mouth! Funny that these dead folk don’t seem to mind being dead or come out that way.
Then there’s tough Daniel Day Kim as Ben Daimio , an agent with a secret who works for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense where Hellboy works as well. Ian McShane is Professor Broom. He saved Hellboy when he emerged from the depths as a baby and became his father. He delivers mostly insipid lines with Elizabethan gravity.
Hellboy is always characterized as an outsider who can’t ever have real relationships. Why did Writer Cosby and Director Marshall ignore making inclusiveness one of the underlying themes that motivates Hellboy? Despite David Harbour’s amiable screen presence, he needs more of a real story to make this not just a money-grab movie.
Instead, this movie panders to the lowest common denominators in contemporary culture by going for the cheap joke wrapped in a pseudo-horror movie. Marshall certainly knows how to bring thrills to the screen. having directed two of the most acclaimed episodes of Game of Thrones, Blackwater in 2012 and The Watchers on the Wall in 2014. But this movie is just one helluva bloody mess.
Lionsgate 120 Minutes R
