If there is one thing that HELLBOY, the 2019 reboot, has in common with the creatures he defends the world from, it is that they are both lifeless, dead things, devoid of any joy. I realize I am not starting off this review optimistically, but ooooh boy, do I not have any other choice.
I’m a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro’s outings with the big red guy and upset as I was that we weren’t going to get Ron Perlman back in the makeup chair for a third outing, I was hopeful for this new version. Directed by Neil Marshall (who also directed THE DESCENT, one of the best horror films, ever) and starring David Harbour from STRANGER THINGS, this film had all the potential to be a classic, especially with its R rating. Instead, we got a bloated, confused, and often-times boring rendition of the character that made me wish it was the actual end of the world.
In the film, Hellboy works for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, fighting to take down the things that go bump in the night, at the behest of his adoptive father, Dr. Trevor Bruttenholm (played by a scenery chewing Ian Mcshane). An incident with some overzealous Englishmen that, of course, belong to a secret, all-boys club, sets off a chain of events that brings the powerful witch Nimue (Milla Jovovich) back to the land of the living…or something like that.
There’s some stuff about King Arthur and Excalibur in there, a girl who can talk to the dead, and Daniel Day Kim being a hard-ass, but honestly, none of it really makes sense. There are certain moves where the plot moves along at a breeze, where you are bombarded constantly with exposition, but done so in such a way that it feels carefully executed and well-paced. HELLBOY is not one of those movies.
Every single scene has some very talk-y exposition, and even ones that are supposed to be fun wind up being flat and lifeless. Characters repeat plot points and motivations ad nauseum, to the point where I literally yelled “Alright, we get it!” at my screen. On top of that, there is just so much plot going on that it is hard to keep track…it’s like a child’s approximation of a Hellboy story, after taking 7 different things and smashing them together. Hell, even the fight scenes left me bored, as they often felt uninspired.
Even the R rating didn’t help here, as the blood and guts just seem unnecessary. And even if they were, the CGI-ness of the entire film looks terrible for a big-budget production, looking more like a 1990s version than something made in 2019. It’s bad…real bad.
Harbour’s Hellboy is okay, I guess, but I feel like he got lost in the role a little bit. He’s not a cigar chomping bad-ass like the comics, but more of a clumsy oaf. Maybe it’s because I binged STRANGER THINGS Season 3 just before watching this film, but Sheriff Hopper and Hellboy were basically the same character to me, just one was a lot more red.
The rest of the cast is also just okay, but holy hell, did they phone in their performances. A paycheck is a paycheck, I get it. But I guess with the dialogue not being great to begin with, there isn’t much to work with.
As for extras, this Blu-ray disc includes “Tales of the Wild Hunt: Hellboy Reborn”, which is a 3-Part Documentary on the making of the film, some deleted scenes, and previsualizations. The latter two are standard fare, nothing too exciting, but if you’re interested in seeing more of how the film was made, I suppose the documentary isn’t half bad. It seems like they had a good time on set while making it, it’s just a shame that didn’t translate into the film product.
HELLBOY is out now on digital download and will be released on Blu-ray on July 23rd.
