HELLBOY (2019) Review
The comic book movie has evolved so much over the years that comic book movies are now being nominated for Academy Awards, with the modern grounded-in-reality approach to classic characters and storylines winning over critics and audiences alike. Movies based on comic books are being taken more seriously than ever in recent years, and as a result, they’re undoubtedly better than ever. But it’s comforting to know that some comic book movies aren’t interested in much more than having a good time. And Neil Marshall’s Hellboy is, if nothing more, a gore-soaked lightning bolt of heavy metal fun. THIS is what it looks like when a comic book comes to life. Specifically, a HORROR comic book. Loud, proud and bloody as all hell.
Boldly leaning into the weirdest corners of creator Mike Mignola’s lore, this new take on Hellboy primarily centers on the title character’s (David Harbour) struggles with nature vs. nurture, exacerbated by the return of Milla Jovovich’s villainous Nimue, also known as the Blood Queen. Nimue, freshly stitched together after being cut into pieces by King Arthur (yes, *that* King Arthur) way, way back in the day, is back and more evil than ever, intent on making Hellboy her King and turning the Earth into Satan’s summer home. In the meantime, well, Big Red has to first slay an endless array of monsters before he can get to Nimue.
Rather than adapting any one story from Mignola’s vast library of Hellboy tales, writer Andrew Cosby and director Marshall instead cherry pick the coolest bits and pieces from throughout the saga, clearly aiming to infuse their reboot with as many creatures and as much over-the-top bloodshed as they possibly can. It’s understandably to the film’s detriment, in the eyes of many, that it’s crammed so full of different storylines and even tones — it’s a globe-hopping adventure that sees Hellboy slaying a luchador vampire in Tijuana at one moment and heading off to England to battle three massive giants the next — but anyone looking for a nonstop blast of blood-soaked entertainment will probably find those flaws to be strengths. At the very least, Marshall drowns out the bad with the good, making sure you’re having so much fun that you hardly even notice the weaker elements.
And indeed there is a lot about Marshall’s Hellboy that’s pretty weak, from the character work to the dialogue. David Harbour proves himself to be a damn good Hellboy, but he’s saddled with terrible one-liners that almost never land. The character is all around far less charming and lovable than Ron Perlman’s iteration, partly because Harbour’s take is a younger, angrier Hellboy but largely because the writing just isn’t strong enough to allow Harbour to really shine. Similarly, Sasha Lane’s Alice Monaghan and Daniel Dae Kim’s Ben Daimio don’t quite pop off the screen as characters you’re likely to fall in love with. And though Milla Jovovich is clearly having a lot of fun as Nimue, she’s outshined by all the other villains at play here.
Nimue’s sidekick, the loyal man-bear-pig known as Gruagach, is a much more proper villain for this particular movie, and the appearance of the Baba Yaga is a real show-stealer. Thanks to fantastic practical makeup work and another creepy, unnerving performance from Twisty Troy, the child-eating Baba Yaga is quite something to behold, and the sight of her bizarrely chicken-legged house walking towards the screen through a thick blanket of fog is one of the film’s coolest, most awe-inspiring images. Again, Marshall leans into the highest of high strange in Mignola’s world, making this one of the weirdest big budget movies in years.
Marshall’s Hellboy is also one of the goriest $50 million movies you’ll ever see, as the film is constantly making damn sure that it’s earning its hard “R” rating. Heads are sliced off, faces ripped apart and bodies completely stripped of their flesh by building-sized monsters, with nearly every single sequence upping the body count and spilling gallons of blood. Mind you, much of the blood — and much of the carnage in general — is computer-generated, but even this practical effects aficionado hardly minded. This version of Hellboy is so cartoonishly over the top that the digital blood splatter kinda just feels right, and aside from one particularly egregious bit of CGI in the final act, I never really found myself crying foul about the effects.
Hellboy 2019 is a bit of a mess, to be sure, but it’s a glorious mess. Heart, charm, storytelling and character work — all things that made Guillermo del Toro’s two Hellboy movies so damn good — are mostly put on the back-burner in favor of nonstop horror-action this time around, as Marshall skips past all the downtime and just gets right to the good stuff. By the time giant monsters start wreaking havoc in the city and literally tearing puny humans to pieces, you’ll either find yourself falling completely in love with what Marshall has done here or you’ll be begging for del Toro to bring a little bit of restraint and class back to the material. Personally, I found myself grinning ear-to-ear, reveling in the bloody chaos playing out in front of me.
Watching Hellboy is like watching all of Meatloaf’s coolest album covers come to life, with a whole lot of Sam Raimi-style horror madness peppered on top. Marshall’s Hellboy sure isn’t the character’s best movie to date, but it’s undeniably the most proudly insane adaptation of Mignola’s work that we’ve ever seen. Best of all, it’s a big budget horror-fantasy-superhero movie that’s made specifically for horror fans and horror fans only, absolutely chock full of images that would’ve been right at home on the cover of Fangoria back in the 1980s. It may be 2019 but Fangoria is back on shelves and Hellboy is up on the big screen riding a giant hell dragon across a fiery hellscape, flame of crowns on his head and Excalibur in his hand.
Right about now, I’m a happy horror fan.
This review was written on April 12, 2019.
