SPOILER FREE REVIEW FOR A MOVIE WHICH COMBINES COUNTLESS INTERESTING IDEAS AND WOEFUL EXECUTION IN A… BOLD WAY

(*Cinema Vault’s Writer sighs deeply with his head in his hands, before shrieking into them, worsening his already prominent headache*)

I have a certain nostalgia for the Guillermo Del Toro Hellboy movies. I’ll concede that they’re somewhat a product of their time, but both still act as entertaining stories, which more than deserved a third film to conclude the narrative in awesome style. With their exceptional set and costume design, unique and thoroughly fantastical tone, and the inimitable central performance of Ron Perlman, a third part was warranted, and yet development hell forced a reboot to emerge instead. In prior articles, I’d noted my optimism – however misplaced – for this movie, especially considering how amazing those first two films were.

In a way, it breaks my heart that this movie is so bafflingly flawed and muddled. Yet I have to give my honest opinions, however regrettable. Hellboy is an unfortunate circumstance of extensive and potentially-engaging vision which just happens to have ALL been stuffed unconventionally into the movie, one that is tragically just not particularly enjoyable, despite the best efforts of all involved (my word, I’m starting to feel really guilty now).

Hellboy is a fantastical Superhero movie with significant horror elements, based off the Mike Mignola comic of the same name. Directed by Game of Thrones’ very own Neil Marshall from a screenplay by Andrew Cosby, the movie stars David Harbour as the title character, an antihero spawned by Nazis, who with the help of the B.P.R.D. must save the world from Mila Jovovich’s Blood Queen (although her motivations, backstory, and indeed character arc are for some reason never even remotely divulged within the movie). Also starring are Ian McShane in that one role he plays in literally everything he’s ever been in, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim and Thomas Haden Church.

Look, I’m going to split this review up into parts, so that my gripes regarding this film can be a clear and fleshed out as possible. This movie could easily have been awesome, if it had amended the things I’m about to get into.

First of all, the monumental issue that Hellboy has is pacing. Everything happens in rapid succession, moving from set-piece to set-piece, but often in ways that feel forced. This bizarre pacing choice therefore fails as the movie blends into one overlong, overstuffed CGI action set-piece. Where you had the authentic set and character design of the Del Toro movies, this Hellboy chooses mass green screen, and let’s just say it looks pretty poor considering all the people who’d worked tirelessly on this movie behind the scenes. There are masses of fantastical elements being handed over to us at a pace too fast to bare, and ultimately it all just becomes overwhelming and eventually dull for the audience.

The story next, and a key issue is how paint-by-numbers it all is. There are clearly an excess of ideas here, and really the movie does feel overstuffed and thus overlong because of it. Ultimately, I feel this story, with a bit more padding, could have made a compelling TV series, especially if the dialogue was improved. However, the story is stuffed full of these concepts and in order to cater for these ideas, the just-about coherent narrative sacrifices any and all originality or emotional complexity in being so. It astonishes me that not a single character is given an arc across the film, something which should be second nature to any screenwriter. How can we empathise with the emotional stakes of the plot, however unimaginative it might be, if we can’t connect with the characters? Not even Hellboy is given any character development, and it baffles me.

Dialogue is where Hellboy really becomes a lost cause. If you enjoy the witty quipping of the MCU movies, or the dark philosophical musings of Snyder’s DC films, then Hellboy will not satisfy you in any shape or form. The jokes quite tragically don’t land (the best line is spoiled in the trailer, as well as the movie – it becomes more and more evident how little confidence the executives had in this one), and there is an immense amount of fantasy exposition which is palpably tedious. It seems a lot more effort has been put into making an action-fantasy movie rather than real seeming characters and conversations. Consequently, what results is a movie which has characters reading lines like they’ve got guns aimed at their heads. I don’t know what it is, but some of the line deliveries – especially from Dae Kim and Lane – feel either awkwardly dubbed, or are so awfully unauthentic that no actor on the planet could deliver them with any gravitas.

Marshall has clearly made an effort to adapt comics storylines to the big screen (the key ones being The Wild Hunt, Darkness Calls and The Storm and Fury), but at some stage, I can’t see how he wouldn’t have realised that there is just too much in this movie, and aside from one harrowing scene that will leave anybody with a soul quivering alone in a dark corner featuring Babayaga (the only truly real feeling or tonally or thematically interesting scene in the film), it’s just dour. Oh yeah, I’ve just remembered – the score. The score is all over the place. you can’t go from death metal to suspenseful strings and violins MID-SCENE! It doesn’t work! I’m sure Benjamin Wallfisch worked very hard scoring this movie, and the music itself isn’t terrible, it’s just how Marshall chooses to use it, and how the notably choppy editing (which I feel also contributes to the cluttered nature of the movie) makes it feel disjointed.

The cast is… well, they’re giving it their best. David Harbour actually makes a fine Hellboy, despite having no character arc or development, or really a personality inherited from the script. He does what he can, especially considering some of the lines he has to deliver, but at the end of the day, he’s no Ron Perlman. Mila Jovovich is ok as the Blood Queen I suppose, but she’s never fleshed out, and the actor doesn’t really do anything to elevate the role. I will have forgotten about her and half the characters in this movie by tomorrow. Even Ian McShane is consigned to a bit-part role, and his relationship with Hellboy feels incomplete, as though key footage had been cut out of the movie improving the emotional value of their dynamic throughout the film. There’s even an abysmal Liverpudlian Warthog who swears and is generally very annoying to compliment the cast. Need I say any more?

VERDICT: GARBAGE

What a bummer. This is probably going to be the most disappointing movie of the year for me, which is a shame. If you’re new to my blog, please like and follow either my Facebook or Twitter (or both) which are under my website name. It would mean a lot. Other than that, thank you for reading, and I bid you adieu! 🙂