‘Hellboy’ (2019) Review

I’m going to try to avoid talking about the Del Toro movies in this review.

Wish me luck.

The two big selling points for this reboot were 1. being more accurate to the comics and 2. the R rating, and you can kind of tell that’s all they cared about when making this movie. I’m not an expert on the Hellboy comics, but I did read The Wild Hunt (one of the main storylines they pulled from most) before watching this and boy are there surface level references to the story. Yes, Hellboy is invited to hunt giants with The Osiris Club. Yes, he kills giants. Yes, he meets up with an older Alice (a girl he saved in a previous adventure years ago). And yes, the Queen of Blood is resurrected and the pig guy wants revenge and blah, blah, blah. The sure do exist, but that does not make it a faithful adaptation in spirit.

The Hellboy comics, while it embraces its pulp influences wholeheartedly, is mainly Gothic horror. Characters speak in verbose sentences and recite lore in a dramatic fashion. There are always heavy shadows and moody lighting. However, it still remains fun. This reboot is the exact opposite of this. It trades dramatic and well written dialogue for terrible jokes and the constant use of “fuck.” Now, I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t like swearing; quite the opposite, I swear like a fucking sailor. However, you have to be mindful of where you insert your “fucks” and how they are delivered. The word “fuck” in this movie is used so often and so poorly that it’s robbed of all its impact. This could be fine if it was just meant to represent a character’s natural vocabulary, but everyone says it and no one delivers it naturally. It’s fucking terrible.

Oh yeah and there’s absolutely no trace of Gothic horror in this movie. It’s trying to be a silly B-movie, but it’s terrible at it. This movie is absolutely devoid of any charm. Also, considering one of its selling points was the violence, that aspect sure did suck. This movie is filled with awful CGI blood and gore. It’s never convincing, and it’s never bad in a charming way either. It looks like the filmmakers thought they had a higher budget than they did and just went off on the violence. It’s not good.

Poor David Harbour. You can tell he’d make a good Hellboy, but he’s just working with pure garbage. Hellboy in this movie is annoying as hell. He’s weirdly incompetent, even though they establish many times that this is a very experienced Hellboy. He’s impressed by a hidden door and a ghost. Are you kidding me? He fights the fucking Baba Yaga in a house with legs in an alternate dimension and he’s unfazed, but he sees one ghost and he flips out. Why? They try to give him a character arc by sympathizing with monsters, but it doesn’t work because every other monster in this movie is evil or a mindless killer. Also it only comes up like more than halfway through the movie. This movie tries to do Hellboy’s origin too, but it doesn’t do anything interesting with it and it doesn’t do it as well as…well…you know. They also incorporate another revelation about Hellboy’s lineage (yes it’s from the comics) but it doesn’t work.

******SPOILERS******

The fact that Hellboy learns that he’s meant to destroy the world AND he’s the descendant of King Arthur at the same time was a terrible decision. The reason why the King Arthur revelation works in the comics is because it is introduced at a time when Hellboy already knows he’s destined to bring about the apocalypse, and it’s something he’s been dealing with for years, both in real time and in the comics’ timeline. When he learns he can wield Excalibur, he grapples with his own violent nature and his fate. However in the film, he just touches Excalibur and has a vision of him riding on a demon and apocalypse shenanigans are happening. Then he’s just like, “can’t use this thing!” But it doesn’t matter because like ten minutes later he uses it anyways and it’s fine. So like. Who cares.

******SPOILERS******

Jesus this movie sucks. Don’t go see it, it’s terrible. There’s so much more that makes this movie bad but I need to go check on my laundry. 3/10 or whatever go read the comic or watch the first Del Toro one on Netflix instead.

Shit, I almost made it too.