Hellboy (2019) movie review

Here's what you need to know; after a life of fighting the forces of evil and saving humanity, Hellboy is beginning to question whether his allegiance truly lies with the BPRD or if he's better off with his demon brethren. But a more pressing issue is at hand when a medieval blood witch returns from the grave with plans to bring an end to the human world, plans Hellboy has to stop, while also coming to terms with his very literal personal demons.
As I'm sure you're aware, I am a fanatic for Guillermo del Toro, the insane genius behind cinema gems like Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone, Pacific Rim, The Shape of Water and of course, Hellboy and its sequel; The Golden Army. But for whatever reason, the sequel that The Golden Army deserved will never be made, and in its place we have this; a reboot/BPRD-CU set up that isn't directed by del Toro and does not star Ron Perlman as Hellboy. So while the trailers didn't swing me either way, I already knew that I'd be watching it with the del Toro films in mind, and that there's no way I'd see it as on par with them, but I at least expected it to be watchable. And do you know what, I was wrong, this movie is worse than I could ever have imagined it to be.

Hellboy opens with a prologue in which we see King Arthur and his Wizard Merlin slicing up the blood witch and burying her parts all over England so that they may never be reunited. Sounds all well and good doesn't it, but there's just one problem, the sequence comes with one of the most obnoxious narrations I've ever seen, it leaves nothing to your imagination and explains everything to you, even while it's happening on-screen; even when there's text telling you the where and when, they tell you anyway just in case you somehow missed white text filling the entire screen. The narration itself is also very edgy, and not in a good way, it's supposed to funny, but it comes across as childish and dumb, all while insulting your intelligence because apparently the best solution to the show, don't tell conundrum is to show and tell. We then get our reintroduction to Hellboy as he goes to Tijuana to retrieve a missing agent who turns out to have become a vampire demon luchador. The ensuing throw down isn't that bad in isolation, but ends up becoming part of a much larger problem that this film has. David Harbour is fine as Hellboy, the film as a whole has a more grotesque visual aesthetic than del Toro's films, and Hellboy's appearance is in keeping with that, because is not pretty, but as well as being easier on the eyes, Ron Perlman was more charismatic and charming, he was cool and fun, and David Harbour's Hellboy isn't even close, he's a bit of dick. del Toro's turning Hellboy into a whiner as also much better done in his films, because in this film, Hellboy comes across a lot more like a whiny, shitty kid, and when he clashes with his dad in the film, which always devolves into essentially Hellboy having a tantrum, it's more awkward than dramatic. And that's just the main guy, his friends aren't much better, but again, they live in a shadow of something better. There is no Abe in this film, none of them come anywhere near to the level of charm and comedy of Doug Jones as Abe, they do tease Abe in the sequel however, oh goody.

Instead of Abe, we get this arsehole Asian guy was going to be played by Ed Skrein before a whitewashing scandal, because current year, and a girl who can summon and talk to ghosts and literally punch the soul out of people, oh yeah, and the Asian guy turns into a cat, did I forget to mention that. I admire the effort in giving Hellboy some new sidekicks; as much as I love Abe, Krauss and Liz from the del Toro films, it would further undermine this film's existence to have exactly the same line up. The issue however is that the sidekicks in this film aren't all that good, and both of them are part of the film's larger problem, but let's not get hasty. Ian McShane replaces the late John Hurt as Hellboy's dad, the head of the BPRD who found him as a baby and decided to take him in, and they've clearly gone for a different kind of dad in this film, because gone is John Hurt's very fatherly quality, Ian McShane is, like everyone else in the film, kind of a dick, but I do at least like that he doesn't lie to Hellboy, that he says it how he sees it and does genuinely seem to love him, while omitting some crucial details about his 'birth.' The film's villain is also kind of cool in all honesty, maybe even cooler than Rasputin, and Milla Jovovich might just be a blood witch in real life because she too does not seem to age, she's hot. There is a degree of menace to her for sure, but the film doesn't really give you any time to dwell on the threat she poses, especially with its terrible sense of escalation, but we'll get to that. Her pig man minion was actually a lot cooler, he reminded me of Mr Wink from The Golden Army if he had a British accent and called everyone wanker, I liked him.

Then there was Baba Yaga, whose role in the film was minor, yet who was probably the creepiest thing in it, a repulsive old creature with a twisted, distorted body who walks around on broken limbs like a crab, it's nasty. Hellboy struggles to compare to the film that it's trying to replace from a character standpoint; its lead is childish and overly whiny, his sidekicks are dicks, his dad's a dick, but his enemy is a little cool and creepy, and hot. But it was inevitable that this would happen, or at least that I'd see it this way since I'm a fan of the films that this replaces and the man who made them, but the problems with Hellboy are a little more serious than some mediocre heroes, in fact, were it just them, this film has a lot of the makings of a good film, so how the film ended up being such a train wreck is baffling to me. Hellboy has one of the worst senses of escalation and plotting I've seen in a few years, honestly, not since Pacific Rim: Uprising have I seen a film where so much of the runtime is filler. Hellboy starts, bad prologue, then Hellboy goes to Mexico and fights a Luchador demon vampire, one whose final words bear a cryptic, apocalyptic warning, so far, so good. Then he goes to the BPRD headquarters in America, before immediately being flown to England to help some aristocratic gang of giant hunters, and this is completely detached from the film's primary conflict.

It is here that we get Hellboy's origins story in a scene that just sort of happens, one that, like the prologue, has a pointless and annoying narration. Having your hero's origins in the film isn't a massive issue, that is unless you can't do it in a natural way, which this film doesn't, and if that wasn't bad enough, this sequence has a severe case of the world building, and not the good kind. It's got everything; Nazis, Rasputin, a famous Nazi Hunter called Lobster Johnson who's treated like a big deal but isn't even brought up again, and outside of setting up a terribly handled character conflict, this entire sequence is, like the giant hunters, completely detached from the primary conflict. The giant hunters try to kill him before getting fucked up by giants, giants that Hellboy then fucks up in a gory throw down before falling unconscious and being rescued by a girl we don't know, but that the film seems to think we know. It's only now that Hellboy finds out about a blood witch, and this is a good ways into the film, by which point Pig Man has gathered all but one piece of her body and is ready to complete her resurrection. The film goes from random and inconsequential things happening to all of a sudden the plot is here and the world is already ending, in about fifteen minutes, there is no suspense or build up to this apocalypse so when it starts, there is also no sense of dread or stakes. This disastrous sense of escalation and foreshadowing carries on throughout the film, as Hellboy then learns that he's the last living relative of King Arthur, which I swear isn't a joke. This film is just a complete mess from beginning to end, and the few things that do work, like Asian cat guy's anti-Hellboy bullet are overshadowed by the complete shattering of any suspense of disbelief, in other words, this film is nonsense.

Then there's the bits where the film tries to be funny, because comedy is just what we need is a film about Hell and monsters and zombie spider ladies that kidnap and eat children. But this becomes a problem when in tandem with the film's gore, because while the gore is menially entertaining, its comedy is very immature and undercooked, which hurts the film's tone as one minute it'll try to be dark and serious, then the next Hellboy will be attempting to make a joke. Far from feeling like it earns its R rating, Hellboy just looks like it's trying to be edgy, which isn't a problem if it's done with some spice and a degree of subtlety, but when it's this in your face, and it's this easy and juvenile, it just becomes annoying, yet another annoyance to add to this film's long list. But it might be able to appeal to the masses on some level, right, after all, it's a violent, gory R-rated superhero film, and they're super in right now. But like the Luchador fight in the opening or the giant battle, there is very little cohesion from scene to scene, particularly in the film's first half, making the scenes where Hellboy isn't killing things seem boring because they don't amount to anything. But at least when Hellboy is killing things, there is a very simple kind of fun to be had in it, what with the ludicrous amount of gore. With the addition of the gore, as well as the climax having literal demons and the film's soundtrack having some pretty metal vibes going on, there was something almost DOOM-ish about parts of this film, which might put a smile on some people's faces, but it only makes me wish that the film went a little more DOOM with its demons and music, because we're talking about DOOM here, you go balls to the wall extreme or you don't bother.

Another thing Hellboy has in common with DOOM is its horror, which, in this case, consists of some very grotesque and hellish monsters, brought to life with a combination of CG and practical effects, and some of the effects looked good. As ugly as Hellboy is, the makeup work done on him was good, Baba Yaga was very good, and a lot of the effects were elevated by some beautifully horrifying imagery, but then there's the CG effects, which look kind of sad. Some of it's good, like the CG on the Pig Man, but then there are some of the demons in the finale, which look pretty bad, a few terrible greenscreen shots and a host of other things that look noticeably fake, including helicopters for some reason. But then there's the girl's ghost summoning, which is not only very gross, but in the end of the film, looks completely pathetic, like the actor's face was projected onto a dummy, a dummy which was itself already noticeably a CG effect. Some of it's bad, some of it's okay, but like the issue of some of the film's story beats working, they end up being ruined by the sheer mediocrity of the film as a whole. But hey, at least they set up Abe for the sequel, a sequel which will totally happen and will totally be an improvement, totally. There was also an action sequence that uses Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue, which you know I love, that makes everything better. And as disjointed, sloppy, awkward, edgy and ridiculous as this film was, the action sequences were, as I said before, fun enough, in a mindless sort of way.


Some dads get their kids Legos
Hellboy is a film that was fighting an uphill battle from the word go, having effectively been tasked with replacing del Toro's Hellboy films and filling the hole left by a non-existent Hellboy 3, but this is the film we have now, and it's a train wreck. Its heroes aren't very likable, its plot is a disaster and its pacing and tone are all over the place. Its action sequences are decent at times, usually elevated by some good music, but they're pulled back down more often than not by visual effects that vary from noticeably fake to outright crap. The film is a disjointed heap of events and circumstances with no real degree of tension or stakes, making a demon invasion seem inconsequential, and I never thought I'd say this, but Captain Marvel, as much as I dislike that film, was more cohesive and well-made than this, dare I say it, I had more fun with Captain Marvel. Hellboy is not good, at all, and I wouldn't recommend it.