Fifteen years ago, a then-little known director named Guillermo del Toro wrote and directed a comic book movie that was pure Hell in the best of ways. Hellboy arrived and as they say, casting is everything. They could not have chosen a better actor to paint the town red than Ron Perlman. A second Hellboy would arrive in 2008 (an underappreciated gem) and then even though del Toro swore he wanted to revisit the comic book stories penned by Mike Mignola, but it never happened.
Hellboy is back, trying to ride a wave of comic book movie love that seems to show that we keep hearing about this potential comic book movie fatigue, but box office receipts fail to find any evidence of that occurring. A casualty should arrive with a brand new Hellboy from director Neil Marshall working from a screenplay from Andrew Cosby.
Where to start with my look at this disaster of an excuse to be called a film?
First and foremost, Stranger Things star David Harbour does everything he possibly can to make this thing at least watchable. The problem is, all the Oscar acting in the world cannot enliven lines that are as dead as the undead that permeate this poor excuse for a movie. Cosby’s “script” is truly something that appears dead on arrival. The fact that this screenplay was not only green light, but a studio (Summit Entertainment) sunk $50 million into making a reboot of Hellboy amazes. Sure, it may seem that comic book movies are simply printing money out there in the box office landscape. What with Aquaman banking a billion bucks and Black Panther breaking box office records and winning Oscars. The thing is, those films had something Hellboy 2019 will never have. Actually, those films have a lot of things that Marshall’s movie would not even know what to do with—characters who are layered and rich, possessing a backstory that warrants an audiences’ care.
Right from the get-go, Hellboy is limp. Harbour is as solid as he can be. This film’s failure is not his fault. That being said, no matter who took on the role, it is also going to be difficult for anyone to step into the boots of Perlman.
Hellboy is a product of a summoning that supposedly went horribly wrong. I mean, look at the guy. Those horns, which he cut off to nubs, and his head-to-toe red exterior screams son of Satan. He isn’t, but not that far off. The “man” is a demon, who was “adopted” by Professor Broom (Ian McShane). He saw something in this creature that yes, has a human element to it, and therefore can be reasoned with and raised to extol justice in the world, instead of sucking the life out of it. OK, we get it and we’re on board with you so far. Then, we get sucked into the crux of the conflict and drama of Cosby’s screenplay. Let’s just say that it is a muddled mess where things that happen don’t have origins that make any conceivable sense and characters seem to move around all willy-nilly in this world that we’re supposed to take at the storyteller’s word that exists. The key to films like this is that the audience buys into this universe where demons walk the earth from the film’s opening salvo. It is a travesty of storytelling in Hellboy because they make connections to other pop culture stalwarts that have you scratching your head wondering if this world of Hellboy really went there. Yes, they did and let me save you from spending any money on this dumpster fire and say avoid this film like the plague.
Speaking of that, our villain arrives in the form of Milla Jovovich’s Nimue, aka The Blood Queen. She was a sixth century supernatural force of well, nature, whose evil was so profound that she was dissected into a dozen parts, put in boxes and buried at all sorts of corners of the British kingdom. Someone (why, we never learn) desires to bring Nimue to the world in 2019 because she can unleash a plague that will infect the human race at a catastrophic rate, and also invite every terrifying embodiment of evil to the surface for a free-for-all.
You know those movies that you laugh at because things presented to an audience are just so ludicrous that there is nothing to do but LOL. Hellboy isn’t even that movie. It’s not so bad it’s good. It’s just so bad it’s terrible. To make matters worse, it is beyond gory—and needlessly so. Blood shooting everywhere is not a cinematic fault, there are countless horror movies that operate in that realm and it’s all par for the course. Hellboy unleashes its tsunami of blood and human guts in the most haphazardly hellish way that it’s not even for shock value. It’s just because they can. I paraphrase that Jeff Goldblum quote from Jurassic Park. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” One scene, for example, finds an evil doer literally just tearing people in half … director Marshall even gives us a close-up for a few of those. Yummy.
Jovovich, like Harbour, is doing her best with what she is given. I’m not sure what these actors thought when they got that excuse for a script. Perhaps it was a paycheck. When it comes to riveting drama and supernatural thrills, one cannot discern that on the written page. Maybe on paper this thing looked better than the results. All the actors are trying and manage to be serious as all dickens trying to bring some sort of joy for the audience. Sadly, there is none to be had. It is a failure of epic proportions.
Daniel Dae Kim is delightful in everything he does. Hellboy even brings the worst out of the Lost veteran. He has this British accent that seems to come and go as it pleases and at no point did the director yell “cut” and correct this problem. McShane even, as someone who can chew up the scenery like no other, just doesn’t even seem to be trying at a certain point. There’s a scene with him near the end of the film that … let’s just say, I can’t. I just can’t. Reading that moment alone in the script, I would have thrown the thing in the trash. Kudos for McShane for at least believing that there was something there worth an effort. This film doesn’t get an “E” for effort. We’ll go one letter lower.
Grade: F