'Hellboy' is directed by Neil Marshal and stars David Harbour, Ian McShane and Milla Jovovich and is a remake of the 2004 film directed by Guillermo Del Toro. This time around the story revolves around Hellboy and a secret society of monster hunters trying to take down an ancient witch, who seeks to destroy the human world with a devistating plague thus allowing the creatures of the night to roam free and rule the Earth.
This 2019 reboot of 'Hellboy' had a lot of potential with a great horror director, some decent early trailers and behind the scenes footage and the idea that it was going for a darker tone much like the comic books which is to be commended. However, what this reboot actually is causes the film to fall apart very quickly and results in a juvenile, shoddy mess that makes you really wish Del Toro was still onboard. With this being a new studio behind it, we sadly get none of the great cast from the first two films but instead we get a severe downgrade of acting talent. David Harbour from the Netflix series 'Stranger Things' is our new Hellboy and he's a far cry from Ron Pearlman. He spends most of the film complaining and only seems to progress or obtain what he needs by pure dumb luck. McShane plays Professor Broom well enough and it's always nice to see him perform but he too spends much of his time fighting with Hellboy with the cringiest dialogue that you'd expect from a sitcom.
Milla Jovovich is as beautiful as ever, but dull as wood here. I really don't have anything against the poor woman but she is just not a good actress I'm sorry. This villain is not intimidating in the slightest and we rarely see her actually fight anyone. She seems so easily defeated at the hands of our heroes that she feels insignificant in her own movie. Speaking of insignificant, a lot of scenes in this movie go absolutely nowhere. They are either there for a cheap laugh, excessive gore, boring exposition or for seemingly no reason other than to pad out the running time. A scene that comes to mind immediately is when Hellboy confronts an old witch he fought named Baba Yaga. This character is in the movie for maybe five minutes total and provides directions that Hellboy could have figured out on his own. It was just to show off another creature that could have been creepy if you had Doug Jones returning but no.
And really the special effects are some of my biggest issues with 'Hellboy'. Things that could have been done with talented actors and good makeup artists are instead thrown into a computer and the result is some of the worst CGI I've seen this year. I've heard the budget for this film was low in comparison to the first two, but that's hardly an excuse. People with talent can take a penny and make something special out of it and this film is a waste of creative monsters although I will say that the makeup that is used are okay for the most part. The Hellboy makeup is nicely done along with the gross plague victim makeups. The other major issue I had was the tone and the overall 'harder' & 'edgier' mentality of the script. This is like a 13 year old boy wrote a fan fiction while trying to sound more mature by throwing in lots of 'F' words and over the top gore. The comic books and the Del Toro films were more about the fantastical nature of this world, while 2019's film is more about exploitation and vulgarity.
It took a bit longer in the year before I saw something that I truly despised, but here we are with 'Hellboy'. This film is a travesty that spits on everything that came before it, leaving a withered corpse and not even bothering to clean it up. It's the worst film I have seen this year with poor effects, cheesy acting, odd edits, boring story, boring villain, and excessive violence and language to overcompensate. I'd just stay home and watch the Del Toro films again.
4/10
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