But in the years following, as del Toro was entangled in his doomed enterprise on The Hobbit, and studio interference wormed its way to the front, it seemed unlikely that a third entry would follow. With both del Toro and Perlman stepping away, things shifted instead to an R-rated reboot, now with David Harbour playing the title character. But losing that original dynamic, what this new interpretation of Hellboy offers us loses that original spirit, and feels less like a rebirth, and more like an obligation.
1,500 years ago, the witch queen Nimue (Milla Jovovich) was slain by the knights of the round table, and the pieces of her body slashed and hidden across Europe. In the present day, her remains are united by her hog-demon follower Gruagach (Stephen Graham), so that she may spread her destructive reach. Not so hot on that idea, the half-demon Hellboy (David Harbour) soon sets out to stop her planned reign of terror, joined alongside by medium Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane), and BPRD agent Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim), but on his quest to stop the terrible witch, Hellboy may also fulfill his prophesied role as bringer of the end of the world.
I could tell just by the film's opening that I was going to have some major misgivings with it. We open in the Dark Ages in 517 AD, as Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table lead an assault on the witch queen Nimue, and than scatter her still living remains across the whole of Europe. The sequence on paper is not what bothers me so much as the execution. The whole time, we have Ian McShane's Trever Bruttenholm rapidly dumping exposition on us, while the actual footage feels like it was gutted and hacked to pieces in the editing room. You can see through all the quick cuts, obvious ADR add-in and overlap, smash-cut to title screen, followed by jumping into the thick of Hellboy's shenanigans. This becomes a bad omen and informer on the quality control of the movie, and shows that hastiness and behind the scenes meddling all the way through.
This puts a serious damper on the character of Hellboy himself, who this movie basically assumes its viewers are already acquainted with, and basically puts any newcomers to the series out of the loop. For the first thirty-odd minutes, this really felt like it was a hastily rewritten draft of a 3rd Hellboy movie, and I wasn't that far off, because Mignola had written a draft with Andrew Cosby (who has solo writing credit for this movie). So in some way, that also gives it a bit of an identity crisis, because in its attempts to differentiate itself from the del Toro films, it still feels like its unfortunately beholden to what those movies established. As such, nothing about this new incarnation of Hellboy has anything to make him stand out, or feel engaging to the viewer.
And this isn't the fault of David Harbour, who actually makes for a decent Hellboy, and is genuinely trying to carry this movie on his shoulders. He's more than capable of embodying the character's signature sarcastic bite, grounding his version with a harder-edged stare and posture, and even the makeup effects applied to him are good stuff. Yes, his only real vice is coming off the heels of Ron Perlman, who was basically born to play that character, and makes an intimidating act to follow. But Harbour is a good substitute who does well to make it feel his own, even if he's let down by the dire movie surrounding him.
Making this even worse is the sheer talent of the supporting cast surrounding him, each with very inconsistent material and direction given. We have Ian McShane playing a new version of Trevor Bruttenholm, played by John Hurt in del Toro's films. And McShane does some solid work, serving as this figure of tough fatherly love for Hellboy, often intentionally provoking him in some way, but unfortunately there's also meant to be this emotional component to their relationship, that soon gets center stage at some point near the end, but I don't think the movie earns it. We also have Sasha Lane as a medium Hellboy knew as a child, but even with that connection, she doesn't feel like a fully formed character. She feels more like a device to keep the story going, quite literally in a couple instances that are the majority of her significant contributions. Daniel Dae Kim also tags along as a BPRD agent accompanying and monitoring Hellboy on his quest, who hides some really enigmatic motivations to his intentions, but feels barely commented on in the grand scheme of things.
Milla Jovovich doesn't have it much better, here playing the film's villain. Again, I don't think that's Jovovich's fault, because she is doing as much as she can with what she's handed. The issue is how she's written and directed, because Nimue is such a static and boring character, sinking the movie like a self-serious lead weight every time she appears, neither entertaining enough to hold the scene, while also suffocating Jovovich with an underwhelming intimidation factor. It's not a particularly original villain either, feeling rehashed of Ahmanet from the 2017 iteration of The Mummy, with only mildly improved results. But we need some comic relief at her side, with Stephen Graham voicing a warthog-demon tasked with busy brute work, who has his own beef with Hellboy following an unpleasant past encounter. But he doesn't feel funny, he just feels annoying and ineffectual, and most of his "comedy" stems from the gratuitous F-bombs peppered into his dialogue.
That's without even getting into the sloppier elements of the story. I wouldn't dare list a full synopsis of this movie, for fear of confusing readers, as well as to preserve my sanity. This movie becomes utterly lost in the nonsensical aimlessness of its script, juggling a multitude of haphazard plot threads, that are subsequently dropped and barely factor into the main conflict. Some of those include; The grisly fate of one of Hellboy's friends who's turned into a vampire, a Giant-hunting faction of the BPRD, the subsequent Giants that he fights, some incoherent gobbledy-gook of Merlin and the legend of Excalibur, as well as pointless sequel baiting. At one point in the movie, the film stops dead in its tracks for an extended deviation through a spooky cottage, that the film itself only remembers in the final post credits clip. There's even an inexplicable cameo during Hellboy's origins that feels bolted on, and goes hand in hand with the utter sloppiness on display.
Which leads us into the movie's R-rating, where in stepping away from the fantasy elements that del Toro put most of his interest in, leans it back more into masculinity and horror. In short, this movie's big defining trait is its violence. LOTS of violence. The movie doesn't even wait for that, opening with a grisly shot of a crow eating a corpse's eye, which becomes another informing trait of the film. Without much of a great story, this movie depends on its gore to justify its own existence, and like a lot of harsh off-color elements of the movie, it ends up feeling gratuitous. The violence never comes across as fun, despite some desperate attempts to feel so. At one point, I kid you not, Hellboy kicks the head off of a zombie, shouting "GOOOAALL!" as he sprints off. This becomes a greater issue getting into the final act, where it feels like the film indulges in that violence simply because it can, and so it just comes across as mean-spirited.
Speaking of which, once we get into the final act, all hell starts breaking loose, and I don't mean that in a good way. If the rest of the film wasn't sloppy enough, this cranks everything up by ten. This movie doesn't have very good CGI, and that becomes a glaring annoyance in the final action sequences, in which dreadful CG is literally everywhere, with washed out colors trading shots at each other, and some disgusting monster effects. Even if I cared for the story or characters, I'd have a hard time stomaching this climax, which progressively flies off the rails with some baffling resolutions and final decisions, playing like an unholy mash-up of Van Helsing and the 2017 Mummy, that leaves a lingering sour aftertaste.
Incidentally, if you care enough about this movie, you'll want to stay for some post-credits clips, where the film digs deeper into fan service and sequel set-up. Not that I'm all that interested in a follow-up if it should even happen.
I didn't want to hate this movie. Even though I was a fan of del Toro's take on the character, I was more than willing to give another incarnation a shot. But this ultimately feels like it had no reason to exist, and even its gratuitous violence, its only claim to fame, can't mask that. There was such a great film that could have come from this movie, and instead it scorches all of that potential. As Big Red himself would put it, "Oh, crap!"
*1/2 / *****
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